Lost Creek Hollow and it gets me down

vague on if terance knows that ibis is lost

the night sky was cloudy. the winter sky was always cloudy. terance still sat and stared up the stars, though he was unable to see a single thing. 

he thought about seabreeze. and okeanos. and ibis. his sweet little bird. he hoped, prayed, that he would be able to see her when he arrived at the willows. he wondered... how that would go. terance was a holder of grudges, sure, but he was good at holding back emotion. he could pretend he didn't hold any, easy as ever. when she'd arrived to the hollow terance had been amiable as ever-- despite the hurt that lay beneath the surface. he would do the same when they reached elysium. he hoped. 


he'd also matured. terance had learned, to a certain extent, to forgive. it was mostly out of exhaustion. he didn't have the energy to hate every wolf who wrong him-- he'd have to pick and choose his battles. as much as he wanted to hate seabreeze, he just didn't have it in him. she had her reasons, and as much as terance disagreed with them... what else could he do? he just wanted to see his children. 

a small patch of sky poked through the clouds, a few bright stars twinkling through. 

and then the clouds came together again.

From afar Deshyr watched the silent musings of Terance, her thick coat ruffled and her eyes sad, as she tried to imagine his life being worse than hers. It was difficult for the girl to fathom—as the most terrible things had befallen her—but he looked rather like she felt. Blank and... listless.

A brave face for the crowd; a lonely face for themselves.

"Terance?" the girl called out, shrugging through threadbare underbrush as she approached the leader's side. She hadn't ever tried to spend any time with him before, but as Deshyr was naturally drawn to where the power belonged, it had only been a matter of time before she started paying closer attention to who was in charge. "Are you okay?" she asked, keeping some distance between them in case she was dismissed, but she strategically wagged her tail a little and smiled very lightly in an effort to encourage him to let her stay.

a rustling in the underbrush drew terance from his thoughts, and his emerald gaze turned with his head to settle upon the figure of deshyr. she and her siblings had grown so much-- in just a few months they'd all be in the adult ranks. 

a pang of guilt struct terance in the chest. so would his children.

"dj," he chuffed amiably anyhow, repressing the feelings that stabbed at his heart, "i'm fine, just wishing i could see the stars." it wasn't a lie-- on either end. terance was fine, it would be unhealthy to not think about such heavy subjects. and he did really wish he could see the stars. his nose turned up again to look at the clouds, his tail swishing. "what are you doing?" he then asked, head turning back to her again. he shifted slightly, an offer to join him.

DJ. She smiled and her wagging intensified, unintentionally inching closer. She wondered sometimes how her name had become those two syllables, having no concept of letters herself nor the cognitive maturity to condense Deshyr and Junior in such a way, but she had never questioned it before, and now she seemed only happy to be addressed at all. She looked up as he mentioned the sky.

Now that he mentioned it... it did kind of suck that she couldn't see the stars or the moon. But lately, things had been feeling like there weren't stars or a moon to begin with. It was like they'd been missing ever since leaving the Sunspire. And how could she miss something she didn't think existed anymore?

Her ears flicked when Terance spoke again, and she avoided his evergreen gaze a little sheepishly, even as she came to sit beside him. "I couldn't sleep," she sighed, her shoulders rising and falling with subtle drama, and just like Terance, she only told a half-truth; unwilling to mention that her father's slow, groaning recovery and her mother's incessant worrying over him was what had driven her from the den that night.

She had previously been able to withstand it, and had made it through the worst of Rannoch's return to form already, but... it was getting harder and harder for her to see him out of commission, and her mother out of it by extension. Wisteria had disappeared, and Remi was quieter by the day. Deshyr had more weighing on her than she dared let herself think about, and she suppressed a shudder from an inner chill than ran through her. Without truly thinking about it, she suddenly asked: "d'you think it's harder for us to sleep when we can't see the stars?"