Broken Boulder The Sweetest Thang

Ioa was slowly recovering from her harrowing journey of the previous month that had taken her to the Teekon Wilds, and to Bracken Sanctuary. The caches here were filled so she wasn’t starving anymore, though she only took however much was necessary for her not to die of starvation, but not so much that she was ever actually full. As a consequence, she was no more healthy-looking or filled out as she had been when Alarian had found her at the border. She still looked too thin and her eyes were not shiny despite their silver color. Her fur, also, was not shiny or very healthy looking. She looked sickly, and she was, and part of that was due to her mental state.

Her siblings still haunted her every waking and sleeping hour and when she would wake from nightmares, she would walk around for hours with a haunted look in her eyes, like she could still hear their cries for milk. They tortured her and made it impossible to talk much to her new packmates—not that she wanted to. She didn’t want to be a bother. So when this happy yearling came prancing past her, she ducked her head, looked at the ground, tucked her tail around a back leg, and pretended she wasn’t there… No one needed to talk to her. No one.