Moonspear fires

Tonravik despised the stupid. She wondered, now, if this brief jaunt was just that... but decided it was not, that it was necessary. Tonravik would scout briefly the outside perimeter and not do anything to bring herself into a state of discomfort. The pack were as much as her children as the cubs in her stomach; genetics meant little when it came to family her mother had taught her. The truth of it was the only biological relatives still living of hers happened to be her mother and siblings. She had a slew of the latter, the most recent of different fathers; they were her family so long as they grew to become Tartok, otherwise they were not. That had not yet happened, unbeknownst to her, but had it would make little difference.

Kapvik had become her family, as well. The moment he entered the pack he had become that; she would have searched for him, had he gone missing, as surely as she now searched for the red one. As for what she had squandered, she thought of that moment not at all. It would seem she had in fact forgotten the incident, if only because she had a greater stress than that—her missing subordinates. Were there nothing else going on she surely would not have forgotten to teach him of this detail she did not allow. The man she moved with now was not nothing or nobody to her; he was a son, a comrade, a brother-in-arms as well as simply a brother; he was family to her in nearly every way. Kapvik threw himself into all of his work and Tonravik had not missed a moment of it; she saw in him permanence, as she had suspected in Iqniq and Nanuk when she had first found them. There had never been a question of Echelon, who had been by her side and had never left it (aside from the time she was commanded to, in order to complete a mission). Of course she had no doubt that had Ivitaruk not been compromised, perhaps he might have stayed, too.

The rest she had desired to keep with them, of course. Their strength surely not to be doubted or questioned. Arverk she felt strongly of, too; the man had much promise, perhaps his potential as great as Kapvik's own. Aariak had been quiet, but not inactive... and now, he too had disappeared in the storm. She sought his body or evidence of his survival, too.

His words were met with a dismissive flick of an ear, a grunt of I know. She displayed her own discomfiture at that, but disappointment replaced the agitation. One could not fight nature and hope to win. The weather was one thing Tonravik would adjust herself and her life for. That could not be controlled. In her youth, she had snapped at the wind, bayed at the thunder to try and force it into quiet. Her mother and her father forced the habit out of her without a word, but she understood after a time. His next words were equally monotonous, and her head turned, muzzle pointed toward him. "Yes. Once more, before we move on. No wolf left behind," came the words heavy with the weight of her understanding, the unsaid words carried by the whipping wind that knotted the fur at her cheek: if it can be helped. And it was then she begun her investigation, loping nearer to the base but minding the unpredictable state of the Spine. She did not climb atop it, as trees hung precariously and threatened to fall and crush them as did boulders anchored by those very trees. Instead she looked for a clear path... and found one. The very trail the storm had carved onto their home.