Hushed Willows I don't know. I'm just making this up as I go along!

Stark's words echoed what he had already heard, that Octavia had never been the way that she had become. Mordecai didn't know what to make of that, only knowing that it did seem she had become night and day with how she had been just a few weeks ago. He spared the thought to wonder what had changed when he was caught off-guard by the offer to have other packs look. His response, though initially silent, showed briefly in the way he bristled uncomfortably along his hackles.

The apology almost went to a deaf ear, but he understood.

"Is that wise, to involve the other packs?" he asked, rather than turning against it. Had it become that necessary? He didn't think so. "I've heard that around here they aren't particularly friendly." But even that had come from Tavi herself and he questioned it in the same stroke. He had already begun to question so many other things when it came to the Keep, perhaps from the moment he had found himself realizing that they were all housed in the same cavern.

He pressed on. "I do have ideas about where he could have gone, but I won't spare looking anywhere that I can. I don't want the one place I overlook to be where he's been all along." And it had been with rising certainty that he had wondered if Pippin had gone home, back to the Hollow, or at least somewhere in the direction towards it. He hadn't been to the north, though Mordecai had not pushed out as far as the coast. Instead his was a widening circle, no doubt pushed wider with the others that had come to join in.