darkly, darkly

He had seen forest fires and their aftermath before, but it was perhaps an entirely different story when it happened to a place he called home. The destruction was immense on scales that Mordecai had not considered. The grounds felt hallowed down, even more so placed in the light that two of their wolves had not been found. Neither bodies nor bones, not even a pile of ash or blackened earth that could have resembled that of a canine.

And though he stepped up to mingle along the borders to ward away those that may have been curious, Mordecai seldom cast his gaze away from the bare canopies that seemingly held the skies in their charred arms. It made him weary. It made them all weary. Yet the visible turn along those borders revealed Lasher to him and he approached with a noticeable sag in his frame; not one of submission, but rather of the weariness that had come along to consume them all.

And where he would have found words to greet his friends, he found no reserve to search for them. What was there to say?