Duck Lake I don't care who I might hurt along the way, I'm f*cking sinking

Away from @Mahler did Wylla stumble, marshaling every last drop of willpower to just keep her legs moving. The tears that had pricked her eyes had dried there, turned cold and icy against her low lid. From a nearby hollow where she had left it temporarily, Wylla retrieved her scrap of cedar, intending to carry it back with her toward the coast and warmer climes, but its taste was ash on her tongue. Its comforting smell was now like cloying rot, matching the choking death of her last desperate bid.

Within moments she dropped it, scraped her hind paws in the snow as if burying offal. No need for that any longer. It had signified something to her before, but now it was just a reminder that she was never going to be good enough for anyone, and that hope had no place within the lonesome hallways of her heart. What had she done so horribly wrong in her life that she deserved to be so alone, to be nobody's first choice, only some last resort that only mattered in the good times, and was thrown aside in the tough ones?

It was a hardened gaze that she turned toward the cliffs, bled dry of all warmth. She would've been content to die alone right there, find the comforting reprieve of death after living with more misery than happiness in her life, except she remembered that Stag was waiting, and she could not damn him to the same life she had lived, with no one to support him or put him first when he needed it. So off she went, abandoning the cedar scrap and with it her hopes, knowing her life's whole purpose now was to hang around long enough to see that @Stag found happiness in his. If it was a luxury she was not permitted to have for herself, some punishment for whatever sins she had committed, then at least she could try to steer him away from the same lonesome road.