Mount Everfall I'm gonna go stop the Big Bad Wolf.

Towhee didn't check to see if @Niamh (or whoever ended up partnered with her) was coming with her. The instant the hawk's message processed, she let out a strangled, "No!" and simply took off after him. She ignored the pounding of her heart and the shakiness in her limbs as X doubled back, leading her in a southwestern direction. Surely he was wrong about what he'd found, although Towhee suspected he wasn't. He was quite familiar with Orca, who was one of his closest allies in the pack after Towhee.

Unfortunately, X had not made a mistake. Towhee's heart leaped into her throat when she saw the crumpled body. She halted, then crept toward it, a whine burbling in her throat. She could see the familiar white markings even from several yards away. With another, "No..." she crouched beside Orca, reaching out to tenderly nose her face. She was clearly dead: broken, cold and stiff to the touch.

She had intended to return to the plateau with her litter mate's blood on her hands. But this was not the right sibling and Orca had not deserved this fate. A great sigh gusted out of Towhee when she realized the hunt for Screech ended here, at least for now. It was much more important to get Orca's body back home for a proper burial.

While Towhee could determine exactly what it was the hawk was saying with its flurry of movements, Niamh had no idea. Whatever it was, it was bad- but she had the feeling it wasn’t with reference to Screech,  not the way fear and dread crept into Towhee’s body. Had X seen Screech dead already, Towhee would simply have been frustrated...So Niamh followed suit, but assumed this had nothing to do with him.

She faltered when she saw the dark, damp fur in the distance and her breath hitched. The closer they got, the more certain she was that this was Orca, until the proof was undeniable. Towhee’s sibling, whom Niamh had only met in passing, was dead. Niamh looked up toward the cliffs from which she had fallen and her eyes darkened.

What if Screech had done this too?

An indeterminate amount of time passed while Towhee simply hovered over her sister's broken body, mourning in silence. At length, she lifted her head slightly, eyes watery as she peered at her best friend. Slowly, she straightened up and walked over to Niamh. Without a word, she pressed against her friend, leaning on her both literally and metaphorically.

"X saw it happen," she said very quietly (for her), belatedly interpreting the hawk's abrupt reappearance and the message he'd conveyed that'd ripped Towhee right out of headhunting mode. "There was nothing he could do," Towhee stated the obvious, looking up and seeking out the bird. He had settled nearby, looking as aggrieved as a raptor could, his sharp gaze lingering on Orca.

Niamh’s steely gaze liwered to Towhee, when she turned around and approached. Niamh tensed, not knowing how Towhee would react, but her posture said it all. Though Niamh’s body still resonated with anger, she softened and not only braced herself for Towhee’s weight, but leaned into her, resting her head on Towhee’s shoulder. No tears sprang to her eyes, though with the rain it would have been impossible to tell anyway. The hurt she felt, at seeing Orca dead and how it killed Towhee to find her sister this way, was soured by the need to find Screech and make him pay.

But Towhee confessed that X had seen it happen, and she glanced to the hawk, silently resigned nearby. Had he seen how? Had he seen Screech? If Screech had done it, and if X had told her that, she knew the hunt would be renewed once the weather shifted. Now, though, Niamh knew it was over. She didn’t pull away, but murmured, with warm, soft breath into the fur of Towhee’s shoulder, pressing her chest against her friend knowing she would at least feel the vibrations of her voice. ”I’m sorry.”

She felt a deep pang in her breast. X had been scouting, per her orders, when he had seen Orca slip and fall. He'd had a bird's eye view (literally) as she tumbled to her death. And there had been nothing he could do to help her, nothing to do but watch her die. Towhee closed her eyes, which was a bit like immersing herself in a sensory deprivation tank. She leaned a little harder into Niamh as she fought the mental images flashing through her head.

Her eyes only reopened when she felt something nudge her foreleg. X had hopped over to stand beside the pair of wolves. Towhee slipped forward onto her belly, putting her at roughly eye level with the bird. "I'm so sorry you had to see that, X," she said to him. "She just... fell?" She hated to make him relive it, especially since he'd already conveyed all this, but Towhee needed to be sure she understood the details of her sister's final moments.

Towhee only pulled away when she too felt the soft touch of feathers to her foreleg, so she gave the two space. Towhee got down on X's level and asked him honestly if Orca had just fallen. Niamh looked up, and gritted her teeth as she did so, squinting into the rain. True, she wanted to believe that she would have all the more reason to hunt Screech down if X admitted he'd pushed her, but at the same time...With this kind of rain, it wouldn't be too hard to believe that her footing had slipped. She would reserve judgement for the time being, until X told the truth.

The bird simply bobbed his head once in affirmation, then bowed it. Towhee stared at him sadly. There was no way to comfort him. The yearling herself was inconsolable, though it didn't manifest just now. There would be time to grieve later—her entire life, for that matter—but right now, duty called. They were far from home and needed to get Orca safely back for burial. It would not be an easy task.

Pushing herself upright again, the Beta mulled for a moment before facing Niamh. -We're going to have to carry her.- She swallowed thickly around a lump in her throat as she added, -It's probably going to be messy.- She winced. The term seemed so uncouth, yet it was just a fact. Orca had fallen a long way and died from her injuries. Her body was not exactly intact, so Towhee just wanted to make sure Niamh was prepared for the reality of the transport.

X confirmed that Orca had simply slipped, and though Niamh wanted another reason to kill Screech, she didn’t like the thought that Orca’s last living moment had been the betrayal of a sibling. Instead, all they could assume was that in the wet, she had slipped and fallen. 

Her lips pursed when Niamh understood the gravity of what Towhee meant. She glanced at Orca, whose dark fur covered a certain amount of the battery she’d received from her fall, but not all of it. She nodded, and swallowed hard. She wanted Towhee to make the first move, though...And she would go for whatever ahe needed to carry in addition.

For several moments, Towhee simply stared at Orca's empty, broken shell, deliberating the best way to convey her back to the plateau. She decided there was no graceful way to go about it. They just needed to grab on and haul. She exchanged a last, heavy look with Niamh, then paced around the crumpled body to get into position.

"I'm sorry about this, Orca," she whispered as she bent to latch onto her sister's damp, crusty scruff. She hoisted her sister's weight, ignoring the splash of thick, dark blood that washed over her paws. After holding her there a moment, she gently lowered Orca back to the ground and let go.

"Can you come here?" she asked of Niamh, waiting for her friend to come closer. "Can you scruff her like I just did? While you're holding her, I'm going to try to slip beneath her weight. I'll bear her on my back and you can walk beside me in case she needs extra support. Sound like a plan?" she asked soberly.

Niamh winced inwardly as Towhee tried to pick Orca up by the scruff, her little body bent and broken, and it would only do her more harm to drag her. She regarded her friend with a doleful gaze as she set Orca's head back down, and moved around into another position. When Towhee asked her to try and hold Orca up so that she could bear her sister on her shoulders, Niamh wordlessly nodded. There was nothing else to do- but if this was Towhee's wish, she'd do it. 

Thus, as per Towhee's wish, she gingerly grabbed Orca's scruff and lifted, craning her own head up so as to lift Orca's front half off the ground as much as she could so that Towhee could slip beneath her. Once she was in place, Niamh nuzzled her way in underneath Orca as well, so that she could be draped across the two of them as she was carried back to their packlands.

The plan worked, though not perfectly. Towhee ended up underestimating how much Orca's dead weight would burden her, how much cold blood would trickle down her shoulders and ribs. This was quite possibly the most miserable task she'd ever undertaken. But she pursed her lips and bore up, with Niamh's help, never uttering a single sound of complaint as they painstakingly returned home with their fallen comrade.