Olive didn’t know when it happened or why, but one day she woke up and everything she loved was gone.

“Aries! Dakarai!”

The pale woman cried out as loud as her quivering body would let her. She would continue to yell out these two names for hours, days, weeks even! She would search until her voice ran hoarse and her feet pounded bloody against the ground, because even that would be less painful than the realization that both her star-crossed lover and her little warrior child had forsaken her. It was unfathomable, and the druid could not reckon with such a reality, and in her frustrations a disturbing, catlike series of yips and strangled cries rose into the nights and continued throughout the days — the sounds of a mother maddened by the loss of her family.

Olive had once been a vigilant caretaker, rarely letting the wolves she loved stray far from where her eyes or nose could track them — but the woman had since developed a sense of trust in Moonspear. Charon and Hydra turned out to be no real threat so she allowed her family wandered the mountain unrestrained, so long as they returned to the den at night unmolested. They always returned to the den. every night! So when Dakarai did not make it home one night, then two, she held Cassiopeia and Aries close and made herself believe he simply needed space. It had not been long since their unholy tryst and the fiery dispute that resulted — it made sense that he would pull away and retire to some stronghold beyond the mountain to ride out the intensities of his anger. But once Dakarai’s enmity dissipated, he would return to her. He could come back to their family and they would welcome him eagerly. That’s how it always was. He always came back! Always.

“Aries, my child, where are you—!”

The pale, frail form of the mother wolf darted too and from the mountain, over the landscape, running and sprinting and darting as fast as she could, here and there, zigzagging all over the place in a frenzied attempt to find any sort of indication where her beloveds had gone. @Cassiopeia was under strict orders not to the leave the confines of their den; the small, peppery girl was the last vestige of her once-happy life and her life could not be trusted with anyone; not even the wolves of Moonspear, not until the mother understood the nature of the two’s separate disappearances — but Dakarai’s scent trails were too old and too faint to be followed and Aries’s breadcrumbs, though they were newer, just… stopped. Olive could not possibly fathom why that would be — did not want to think of the possibilities! — and in a sudden fright, the waif skittered back to the mountain. If her olfactory senses would get her no where, then perhaps the elevations of Moonspear would allow her to glimpse them.

She raced towards the mountain, unceremoniously passing the remnants of her garden, which had gone unattended to and desiccated in the dry summer’s heat — but not a thought was spared to the flowers and herbs that had taken so many hours of her life to grow. Olive climbed higher and higher and pulled her frail body upwards — and it took quite some time with her body and spirit so weakened under the weight of her melancholy. But the mother pushed on, from where the mountaineer terrain turned from green to rocky and sometimes the earth would slip beneath her feet and she would stumble and clip her pale chin upon the ground. It was a treacherous height to scale even for a climber as shrewd and as dextrous she! the entire time her heart raced and blood thrummed hotly through her veins, her head throbbed and an upwelling of anxieties leached out from the deepest recesses of her soul, so much so that it clouded her mind entirely. Not a single thought she had was not tainted with some poignant sense of self-loathing. it’s my fault. they hate me. it’s my fault. they hate me and that’s why they left.

There was a small ledge that rose from the rocky face of Moonspear’s upper reaches, so Olive picked her way to it and hauled her small body atop it. Here she squinted and strained against the light of the summer’s day, but the land below was nothing but a smattering of greens and browns that her canine eyes could make no sense of. If they either Dakarai or Aries had been within that range, there was no way she would be able to espy them. Somehow, at that moment, she understood that she was never to see either of them again.

"oh..."

— and suddenly she felt sorry, so very sorry! Sorry that she had ever met Dakarai, had ever made him love her, had spurned him and turned him away. To turn away the only wolf who had ever truly loved her; it seemed so silly now! Olive could trust her logical mind and rationality no more than she could trust the fickleness of the gods — her decisions always seemed so right in the moment, but they always sparked, conflagrated and then fizzled into a beautiful kaleidoscope of horrors. She could not trust herself, could not trust this world, could not trust the gods. Oh! Those lovely gods, the gods seemed to only wish pain upon her — upon her! their most faithful and devoted servant.

Had she not done enough for them? Why did they continue to punish her? Was her happiness was not enough? Perhaps they wanted more from her. They would continue to hurt those around her until she truly gave the gods what they desired. But what more did they have to give — what more could they want from her?

All she had left to give was her life.

Her sullen, faded gaze fell from the horizon and all the land that lay beneath, straight down the rocky face of the mountain’s steep summit, counting the stones as if they were rosary beads and wondering how painful a death upon them would be. Surely, at these heights, death would come quickly. Maybe she wouldn’t feel it. Perhaps it would even feel good.

It was at this point that her racing thoughts slowed and her heart beat cut its breakneck pace; it was with a sudden calmness that she laid down on the small ledge, her pointed chin and paws hanging languidly over the side of the cliff. Surely she was not the first wolf to ascend these heights and consider dashing herself upon the rocks below, and surely she would not be the last! If that was the case, how wrong could it really be? The longer she resisted, the more the gods would storm and hurt Cassiopeia, Sirius, Dakarai and Aries — if the latter two were even still alive to know future hurts. Her sobs and ungodly cries had quieted and Olive felt a pervasive sense of emptiness settle upon her — nothingness. 

The woman weighed her options and stared emptily at the stonelaced valley below.