Arrow Lake you saw the snakes but not the sorrow

making assumptions, whoops

It would be easy to turn around and leave. The puppies haven’t been yet—to his knowledge—and they would be fine. Asterr can do it alone. It would be easier, too, if they didn’t know him, if they didn’t know their father was a failure. They don’t have to be like him. Asterr can raise them to be strong without him because he’s done nothing but leave a crash site everywhere he goes. With Tavi gone, the maplewood no longer holding a pack, his original home no longer welcoming of its heir, what did Ukko have going for him?

When Asterr questions his name, he spins his head around to see her, not having really noticed her approach. Lost in his own mind so far that he no longer feels real, he begins to question whether or not his mate is even real. He scoffs inwardly. His mate. The mate he doesn’t deserve, the children he shouldn’t even have. She can do better. 

Ukko opens his mouth to all these things but they got lodged in his throat and nothing comes out. Her question replaces the silence and he slowly turns so that he can face her, noticing that she is still just as swollen as when he’d left yesterday morning. 

“I…” he pauses. I don’t know. He forces himself to look away, then around him. It would be easy to outrun the woman, leave her in question in his path. “Tavi,” he says again and points his nose to the ground. “She’s dead.”