Hideaway Strath bang the old hollow rubber ball around.

Trapped.

In spite of the tumultuous first couple weeks of his life, Figment had thus far lived a very happy, uneventful life. He had never wanted for anything. The moment he'd lost his birth mother, his aunt had stepped in and filled that hole so completely that he never even wondered about the woman who'd created him. The moment he'd been uprooted from his natal pack, he had been transplanted to a territory that provided him with even more sustenance and security than he'd had before. At every turn where it seemed as though he would hurt, he had experienced added joy. He had lived a charmed life indeed.

Until lately. First the earthquakes, then Fennec, and now this landslide. Figment wandered listlessly through the territory, dismayed and uncertain. His daily activities had once upon a time consisted of protecting the borders or protecting his sister. Now, their borders were buried in rubble, and Fenn was lost. He didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know how to be helpful. He didn't know how to protect the things that he no longer had. Would it really have mattered anyway, even if they came back to him? He had already failed.

Fig heaved a deep sigh as he paused on his path. A tree limb had fallen across one of his regular trails, likely from some recent tremor. It was large and likely heavy, but with nothing else to do, the young wolf went ahead and grabbed it between his teeth and began the arduous task of dragging it out of the way. Fenn might not be with them anymore, but Fig still harbored hope that she might come back someday. So, he would keep her trails clear for her. Just in case.

At first, Towhee resisted the urge to rest up and heal, determined to stick to her duties despite their predicament. But as the weeks bled slowly by, with less and less to do with herself, she found herself sleeping a lot. She dreamed quite a bit too, Wildfire featuring in many of them for whatever reason. Usually, she and her dead older sister were trying to escape some claustrophobic environment or another, usually to no avail. Towhee supposed that made them nightmares.

She roused just now and sat up, blinking in the midday light. She knew she should get up, try to find some food and maybe a pack mate or two to socialize. But depression had sunk its fangs into her and it took Towhee a long time to finally force herself to her feet. It took several more minutes to take one step, then another, and she found herself plodding rather mindlessly through the grove.

Considering they were trapped in a fishbowl, it was only a matter of time before she crossed paths with somebody. Towhee stopped and watched Fig remove a branch from a worn footpath. She neither interrupted him, nor offered to help. Her orange eyes followed him in silence, wondering why he bothered and wishing she could drum up the energy to keep bothering too.

Fig didn't notice when his mother approached. He was too distracted with the limb, which proved to be rather heavy, and rather stuck. He tugged determinedly for a while, then stood back and huffed as he looked it over thoughtfully. He paced around it and grabbed it again, tugging it from a different angle in hopes of getting better results that never came.

After another few minutes, he stood back once again. His frustration was growing, but it felt oddly good. It was nice to be angry instead of sad for a while. It was also nice to have a problem in front of him that he felt he could actually solve, rather than one he had no hope of fixing.

Fig followed the branch off of the path where it appeared to be tangled in some shrubbery. He peered thoughtfully at it, calculating, then steadily went to work trying to dig the tree branch free.

Even when it became clear that Fig was struggling with the branch, Towhee didn't move to help him. He didn't seem to notice her, which was just fine. She slowly dropped onto her haunches, watching him, her orange eyes dull. She knew she should offer to lend a hand, especially when he began to dig, but she simply couldn't muster up the will to do anything.

Instead, she found her mind suddenly wandering to X. Towhee swallowed thickly, her deadened emotions now sharpening to a painful focus. She had been intentionally blocking out any and all thoughts of the hawk, though now she permitted her memories to play like a movie in her mind's eye. It was better to feel something than nothing, wasn't it?

Towhee was seated in the middle of the pass, X hanging out on her shoulder, when the hawk's talons suddenly dug into the meat of her shoulder, wrenching a startled cry from the wolf's mouth. X's wings beat against the side of her head as the raptor abruptly took to the air, causing Towhee to glare after her, then arch her neck to peer at the shallow cuts on her shoulder. "The fuck," she muttered under her breath, right as the rumbling began.

And that was the last she'd seen of the bird. She'd dug herself out of her would-be grave days later but X was nowhere to be found. Surely she'd escaped the fallout? But Towhee couldn't stifle the bad feeling that the hawk hadn't taken flight quickly enough and was somewhere under all those rocks.

Fig's focus shortly became entirely absorbed by digging the limb free. At first, he was careful and slow--studiously positioning himself here and there in order to tactfully remove the obstruction. Unfortunately, the task wasn't actually as tedious as it needed to be in order to distract the boy from his troubles. Thus, his mind began to wander, and soon he found himself thinking of Fenn again, and how he had failed her.

Steadily, his movements became agitated, and his careful precision grew reckless. He tore at the earth with abandon as anger and misery began to take over his limbs. Before he knew it, there were tears in his eyes as his lips peeled back in a snarl. There were cuts on his paws when he finally stopped, but it was only to fling himself bodily at the tree limb, beating against it as his cries became sobs. He was a failure. He was worthless. He couldn't even move a god damn tree limb out of the way for her.

The glaze in her eyes lifted, her lips parting as she prepared to break the silence at long last. "Have you s—" Then her senses caught up with her mouth, which she clapped shut as she watched her son's emotional outburst. For a solid two heartbeats, she gazed at him dumbly, blinking slowly once or twice.

Her reflections about X had stirred up some of her emotions, which redirected from the hawk to her son. "Fig," she mumbled, "hey..." She rose and hobbled over to him. Towhee stood beside him, wondering if she should stop and soothe him or let him work it out on his own.