Seaside Moors (how many people ready to rock the house?)

technically a RO, but if anyone wants to chuck in a single post acknowledging val's disappearance you are more than welcome to do so. backdated to the day of the WB challenge. <3

raleska (dubbed: stern auntie) had made good on her promise to @Rosalyn, and arrived one grizzled grey morning while rusalka's fate hung in the balance. valravn was unaware of the tenuous kismet his pack faced: he was presently snoring away, mouth slightly open and drooling on a sleeping @Chacal.

they'd been stirred awake by rosalyn. valravn was the least enthused to wake from his nap - he protested with a clumsy swipe of a paw, sleepy-eyed and yawning -- until at last rosalyn ushered him out of the den and into the misty grey morning.

blegh. he yawned loudly, wiping sleepy-crusties from his eyes. a look to his siblings confirmed they also thought this arrangement from comfy den to cold overcast morning was, well, not top tier.

any reluctance he had about the rude awakening was doused immediately as raleska announced they were to go on a scouting mission. OH! valravn's eyes boggled out of his head and he grinned excitedly, shouldering one or two siblings (maybe a @Regin? who knows) as he yipped and yapped that he was READY AND TO HURRY UP!!

chubster val didn't wait for directions. he sped off on blurry, pudgy legs -- only to be quickly reigned in by scary-auntie, who snapped at him once or twice as he distracted the group. suitably ushered into unusual silence by her austere mein, valravn kept in faithful step behind raleska up until they came to a clearing in the woods.

here, a very enticing scent trailed through the grassy knoll -- one that immediately had his babysitter's hair on end.

the scent of bear.

valravn had no idea what a bear was (friend? fluffy, furry friend maybe??), but his babysitter sure did. she called to all of them instantly, fur on end along her back -- it was enough to make normally oblivious val turn around and think huh, whut?

he didn't have a chance to say anything before a large, golden-furred shape obscured the trail. his stern-faced aunt and siblings were suddenly out of view as a hulking thing prowled towards him -- valravn's ever-wagging tail slowed in tempo as he saw, clearly scribed across the things' massive muzzle, an innate ugliness that peered back at him with beady, malicious eyes.

oh shit.

the bear began its lumbering canter towards him, a bellow loosening from the massive cavity of its mouth. valravn's insides seized in horror, but instinct took over just as the bear swiped for his skull in a motion that would have detached head from shoulders in one clean sweep.

he ducked, and before he knew it he was running in a blind panic -- down through fen and glade, through stream and forest -- until at last the thunderous steps of the bear were well behind him and nothing looked familiar anymore.

"valravn!"
a bear, a bear, its slinking pernicious musk permeating the moors and opening a chasm of fear within erzulie she believed she had forgotten,
until this moment — her son, her son, her —
all others counted and collected once the bruin had departed, but not him, not the boy saved and —
ironsea and its sundering; tell me not that this place too be cursed.
up and down and her stride lengthening until erzulie began to come unraveled in her perilous shouting gone hoarse and the meander of her search.