Hushed Willows oh, it's definitely the end times

Silence lapsed between them for only a moment, but when it was broken he found that her words sounded genuine. But they were not enough to immediately sway him into speaking more. Instead he fought with the urge to continue off on some bitter note, having every reason to fire off at the mouth about all that had come about in just a few short days to put such awful things into motion. But perhaps a wiser piece of his mind thought he needed to put it delicately, and that was the attempt he was soon to make.

"A few days ago," he said, though it was more of a reiteration than anything. "There was an... incident of sorts. He took off running in the middle of it, I didn't have a chance to go after him." He had never thought that the boy would have simply kept running, not after the blows he had taken on his own. But adrenaline was a funny thing, and so was willpower. They had all endured enough to either fuel or ruin them and so it seemed not a stretch at all that the two could invert in an instant's notice.

"I've scouted through bits and pieces of the north, and up through the mountains. I've had no luck and Harlyn's in no shape to search for him herself. I haven't even turned up a sign of him here, though I doubt he'd want to stay around here. None of my children are happy here, really." He hardly blamed them, his tone suggested as much. All of this had pushed the cougar well off of his radar and had the beast pursued them this far, it would have surely wreaked havoc by now.