The fire of fear had burned a hole in her gut so deep that she felt she was beginning to wither away. She believed that she would turn to ash and drift with the wind; no one would find her once it had taken her away. It would have been for the best, she realized. For all that she was, the ghoul had not offered much to the world. In this, she felt that she had taken more than she was ever intended. The remainder of her life would be a fight, she knew, but even still... she was too afraid to die.

Wandering through the early morning of the wood, Lucy noted how desolate the terrain was. While the decimation was not recent, it could still be noted that a disaster had swept through the forest and taken everything with it. Life would return – as it always did – but it had left a dark scar. The ghoul swept her gaze from side to side in search of passersby. She did not want to be caught unaware. A small voice in the back of her skull reminded her of Skwol and she felt a pain seize her chest as she imagined him moving on without her. It would not have been right for the young girl to keep him, or weigh him down. She knew that he would find better companions in time, but Lucy still missed him and the golden sparkle of his gaze. It was what she held close in order to move forward.

The sound of a stranger's voice was enough to startle the young girl from her stupor and bring her to lock a pair of robin egg blue eyes on the other female. Lucy peered at her with her head held close to the earth and her ears swiveled forward. There was a flush of wariness about her stance, but she did not flee. The ghoul was far enough away that she could escape with ease, but close enough to recognize the coat pattern that adorned this stranger's body. Her limbs became rigid and she lifted her skull upward, canting it to the right just slightly. With the spiky tendrils of her pelt rising along her neck and shoulders, the shadow took a tentative step toward the Finley twin. Though she did not remember her sister, she knew that there had to have been some relation.

“You know Finley?” the dark girl inquired with a small frown. Her voice was soft and her body shook somewhat as the inquiry left her lips. For all that she was, Lucy did not feel as though she was part of the Blackthorn family. Once, she had been, but that day seemed so long ago. Her kindness was not afforded to the unknown sister. All formality had vanished from her form as she looked upon the younger wolf – unique in her own right, but identical to the leader of the caldera.

Ahh, of course, she thought to herself with a small grimace. It only made sense that she would have given birth to such a similar young girl. It was the pang that Lucy could tell this stranger was just around her own age that forced her to realize this was a sister. The frustration of having come across two of them was more astounding than she cared to indulge, so the shadow gritted her teeth together and swung her ears to flatten against her skull. Not sure how she would escape this particular conversation, she opened her mouth to answer and felt only anger.

“Yeah, I have,” she responded through gritted teeth. The ghoul felt like she was washed with fire. She had never really prepared herself to have a conversation of this nature with a sibling she couldn't have remembered if her life depended on it. Congratulations, you've just gained a sister, didn't seem at all appropriate for the situation, so she left her words short and sweet. If her sister pressed on, the truth would be unavoidable.

There was a bubbling mixture of anger and jealousy that spilled into her chest. The other Blackthorn seemed as though she was familiar with some of the trouble Finley would get herself into. Lucy wondered what it would have been like if this sibling had been the one who was scooped up in her youth and taken from everything she knew. The shadow wondered if she would be having the conversation with Liffey, and not the other way around. The literal black sheep nodded her head softly and shrugged her shoulders in response to this wolf's response. She bit against her tongue and reminded herself that she needn't spill the truth just yet.

“Right, sure,” the ghoul answered her with a ghostly little smile on the edges of her lips. Finley was just... unique she reminded herself in the voice of her sister. It drove her to a distinct sort of madness and she breathed a heavy sigh. “Was she a good mother?” the dark girl then inquired with a tilt of her crown. Her pale blue gaze latched tightly to the features of her sister's face and the happiness that shone there.

The shadow listened carefully to the girl's remarks and found a black pit of jealousy had formed in her gut. It was not that she was displeased with Liffey's well-meant upbringing, but more so that she would have liked to have felt the same. It would have been nice to refer to her mother as a troublesome, well-meaning individual with her own unique and endearing quirks. The words felt bitter in her mind and would surely sound the very same if they had been uttered. Still, she listened to her sister speak and nodded her head slowly. Lucy had had enough. She couldn't stomach any more of it, for her own sake.

Then, the question fell between them and her ears swiveled to stand straight, upright, rigid atop her skull. Her blue eyes darted fearfully to the other wolf and she frowned. There was no simple way to answer that question, unless she chanced a lie. The ink hound felt as though it would not have fallen on the tone of convincing, if she did.

“I don't really,” she stated in an offhanded sort of way. It wasn't a lie; Lucy knew very little about her mother, save for the few experiences she could recall. It seemed that few of them were looked back on with fondness, and she did not want that to be the feeling she led with. Surely, it would frighten the other off. “I mean, she's my mother.” The words were almost strangled from her throat. They burned until they touched the air at the tips of her lips and were carried away. Then, the shadow stood rigidly, her head held low and her gaze trained on the features of her sibling.

“But, I don't really know her.”

It would have been ideal if Lucy had been able to respond with her sister’s own name. It would have shed a warm happiness on her life; something so rare and fleeting that she scarcely knew what it meant anymore. The thought that she could have been close to this slate-coated woman was astounding. It rattled her; it fastened her to the earth with such force and power that she feared she would never be uprooted from the spot where she stood. How sweet it would have felt to approach the other Blackthorn and drink in the scent of family. It would have been even humorous for the two girls to share that Liffey had found a way into Rannoch’s heart and that they were building a family. Lucy could have recounted tale after tale to the grey sister and they would have found a moment of irony in all of the heartache.
 
Unfortunately, it was not way things had been intended to unfold. When Liffey spilled her name, the dark girl’s eyes narrowed, and her ears flattened to her crown. Even the fur along her neck and spine began to bristle, but only because this entirely unfamiliar figure knew her. “Yeah… Lucy,” she echoed with a clipping of her tone and a tight lump that had lodged against the back of her throat. “What are you called?” It was – perhaps – a strange question to follow up with after meeting her sister for the first time that she could recall. Still, the ghoul did not know quite how she was intended to follow such a difficult outing of information.

Where Liffey had found relief, Lucy could find only despair. She was frustrated that she didn’t even know how significant it was to cross paths with the slate-coated female. She didn’t know that they were from the same litter – though she could very well venture a guess. The dark girl was astounded that she had fought so hard against the idea of returning to her home, with their mother, and living out her days in the Caldera. That had been so long ago, though. Finley had searched for her when she had still been nothing more than a dark young pup, lost in the expanse of earth. Burning still from the feelings of abandonment, Lucy listened to her sister and swiveled only a single ear atop her crown.
 
Questions started to line up in her mind, unspoken, but ready to know some truth about her life and the family she had managed to leave behind. She looked at her sibling with an expression haunted by loss. The light blue of her eyes shot toward the earth as Liffey attempted to soften the confidence she had used with their mother. Lucy didn’t blame her; she had a better frame of reference for how great the Blackthorn matriarch had really been. The dark ghoul would never have known.
 
“How many are there? How many siblings?” she finally inquired.