Stone Circle the light she brings

set after this thread, staying a bit vague
@Valette @Greyback she's at the border, not past it

It is a long way from the depths of the glade to Easthollow's border with a body in tow, yet no amount of reasoning with herself will loosen her own grasp on the corpse's scruff. She had a name, she reminds herself, she told me. But she can't recall what it is now.
She knows she will not recognize the border by scent, with her face buried in the dead woman's scruff and coated in blood; her own and the stranger's, though mostly the latter. She's never hunted anything as large as a wolf, and she hadn't realized there would be so much blood. It's all she can smell, all she can taste, and she can feel it cooling and congealing all over her neck and chest. She won't smell anything else while she's like this, she knows, so she forces herself to focus her gaze ahead despite her blurring vision. Eventually the world starts to tilt, but it starts to become familiar, too. I'm here, she thinks, and finally her aching jaws loosen enough to let the body drop. She slumps against it without a sound, wondering tiredly if Greyback and her mother will enjoy their belated wedding present.

He's been making his rounds across the border, checking it daily, nightly, every few hours—hoping for a sound or a sign for his son to return. For pack members to return. For the prey to return.

It was the scent of a familiar other carried downwind that made him pause, posture stiff and rigid as the iron smell of blood mixed with it. He kept his distance, held fast by an urge to investigate but also not to be foolish. The only sound he made was a warning call, his deep voice echoing into their as he called for others. For @Valette . However, it wasn't long until he would finally get an answer as a female cleared the hill, hunched over and carrying another- Kiran. Both of them were dripping in blood, the bright color of it staining their fur, and when the deliverer collapsed he neared forward.

He could see now that Kiran was dead, limp against the earth and stiff. He grimaced. First Indra, now this. "How many will return to us like this?" he muttered, not caring if the girl heard him. He shook his head, and for the first time in months gazed upon Keen. She was older, more filled out and no longer lanky as she was in her pup months. It was hard to believe that the small ball that could fit in his paw now stood before him, bigger and coated in blood.

He smiled at her as he always did—with warmth and love. Greyback always regarded her and her siblings as his own children, even if he knew she didn't feel the same. Merrit loathed him in his own right, but before he ran off that cold outer shell began to crack and let the man in. Would Keen do the same?

"Your mother has missed you." was the only words he welcomed her with. No questions.

Valette heard the howl her mate and since it sounded serious, she was instantly worried. The female rushed to the borders. Perhaps Greyback had found Clay!! She hoped that it would be the case. She was getting more worried ever since snow was starting to fall. She hoped that he was somewhere safe at least. Valette came to the border, however she was not disappointed with what she saw. It might not been Clay but another of her children, Keen!!

Valette rushed to them. Only then she saw the dead body of Kiran. Oh no. Why did this happen? "Keen!!," she greeted and then trotted right up to her to lick her face and tend to her. "I was so worried. We have been looking for you everywhere," she commented to her daughter.

The edge in Greyback's voice drew Nanook backward, to reroute her patrol along the perimeter she had travelled some incalculable minutes before. All had been ordinary when she'd passed by at first, but that had been then. Now, how the landscape had shifted. Greyback, accompanied by two others, and she caught sight of her sister sprinting up to join them.

Valette's voice met the air with a vibrant greeting -- Keen -- and as the name clicked, Nanook's heart would have leapt through her paws to spur her onward in like energy, if not for the inexplicable sense that something here was off. She couldn't place the intuition, she never really could. The warrior narrowed her eyes upon those collected there, in hopes of gaining some semblance of focus. Instead the wind met her with a harbinger of nothing good: blood.

She could see it now, that the gore plastered within the rich browns of Keen's fur, and trailed down onto the limp body at her side. Nearly unrecognizable through the staining of blood, and smelling heavily of nothing unfamiliar, which meant she was a part of Easthollow. While Valette spoke at Keen, the warrior circled around Greyback until she stared face to face with the deadened eyes of Kiran.

A coldness seeped through her belly. She had never interacted much with the woman, but she remembered the small moments they had patrolled together, or hunted down prey to provide for the pack. She had been family, on the line of being Easthollow -- and while Nanook understood the attention her sister and the patriarch lent toward Keen, she felt disturbed by their lack of attention to the seemingly greater issue at hand. Nanook hardly glanced at the others. Her full attention instead turned to study the wounds that fell across the body of their fallen.