Silvertip Mountain put me in a cab to suburbia

astara sat on a thick wedge of stone, eyes closed and mouth slightly parted. she’d made this jutting piece her makeshift throne these last weeks, sunning on its precipice often.

in truth, the blackbird was tired. a fatigue had settled thick around her shoulders — predating even her children’s arrival. what she suspected was first simply a mother’s illness had persisted — dredging her days with filmy cheerlessness.

she slept for now, front and center to the den her children often rested within.

they had a captive now.
merrick made his way toward the blackbird, curling as close upon a tiny fraction of stone as he was able. his muzzle caressed the bulb of her ear.
her fel power had continued to waver after their children. "my love, my love."
how powerfully all of merrick sang for her now!
"i have brought blood for you to drink."

she was woken; not by the insistent mewl of child, but the stroke of the bruin himself. for a moment astara flickered between that plane of distorted dreams and the reality, the last thing she was cognizant of was a great shape engulfed in red before she was brought forth to the present.

merrick. her eyes flickered. were those indigo depths capable of warmth, they might have flushed with fervor. tired as she was these days, he always managed to pull from those receding depths a glimmer of life. blood? for the little astara? she returned his kiss with one of her own, resting on her flank then as she eyed him and awaited his promising explanation.

"we have a captive," and merrick began to explain how they had caught the trespasser, and bound them upon the sheet of ice.
"i don't know yet what to do with the little fool." the single eye burned toward the raven. he hoped to buoy her mind and spirit by the thought of blood-letting.
"a fountain for you. drink and be restored, my love."

a captive. in her stirred an excitement that had been shamefully quiet for a long time. so much energy, she marveled -- how full of life her great bruinwitch had become. she thought she would hold that glint of excitement in his singular eye in her mind forever; let her forget everything, but never that.

she reached for him then, partly in answer. a captive was a liability, not an asset -- it had to be fed, it had to be watched -- in astara was a brutal pragmatism that captives served only one purpose and it was to make an example of them. kill it, she thought -- kill it to please the bear.

maybe in killing, it might truly restore her -- and she might once again walk among her kin unburdened by sickness.