Neverwinter Forest black leaf

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The pallid woman's voice spoke of her grief, it lingered in the flow of her words as they spilled from betwixt her lips. She introduced herself as October and gave him her rank: Delta. The norseman offered her a sage nod, ears cupping forth atop his skull, attentive as she added to it. She spoke that she had accompanied Scimitar in his search for Rannoch. “Thank you,” Kjalarr offered her quietly: for accompanying Scimitar, for helping in the search for Rannoch, for returning and for standing resolute against him. As unorthodox as it sounded he would have been disappointed if he'd met with no resistance from those that were not Frostfurs and had not known him since Scimitar had taken him in and under his wing. Though her resistance could easily be seen as insubordination Kjalarr took it to mean that she had meant what she said: she cared about Neverwinter Forest and that was what he wanted. In order for roots to form and truly take hold a pack had to care about one another. Perhaps that was Saltwinter's ultimate undoing: when they were not at strife with one another (he thought specifically of the personal war between Ondine and Maude {even if it was over him, oops}) they were what Saltwinter had deigned to be upon it's conception: strangers banding together to survive, in reality. It had never been meant to live past it's first winter. Perhaps in that sense it'd always been a ticking time bomb.

There were roots here. Solid, deeply entrenched. Kjalarr appreciated that, and he sought only to nurture what had already grown. His gaze softened for a moment if she wondered what he had numerous times after Whittier'and even Caiaphas' death: that if she had stayed, if she had been there that Scimitar's death could have been avoided. He did not place the blame anywhere but where it belonged: on the bear(s) responsible; but he would never truly forgive himself for Caiaphas and Whittier's deaths and perhaps a part of him longed to find that irrational "survivor's guilt" in another — someone who understood. Both had fallen to the sea and both times the consideration that he could have saved them if he'd only been there lingered. Kjalarr understood that the Norns had long since decided the future of them all long before they were even a thought in their parent's heads but still. “This year has not been kind to our family.” Kjalarr drew in a deep breath and let it out. It all went wrong with Whittier's death (in his mind) and had been a downward spiral from there ending with the death of the Frostfur patriarch and his mate (whom Kjalarr regretted that he'd never gotten the chance to meet).

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