Redhawk Caldera No matter how much it hurts, no matter how hard it gets, you gotta keep grinding.

Fin had spent much of the famine in - what felt like - her own little world. The whelping den where she raised her four little pups seemed so removed from the rest of the pack and the troubles that plagued them. They too were suffering from the lack of food, but not nearly as much as the others, and so they existed on a happy little island beneath the evergreens at the Northern edge of the Caldera.

But, the whelping den was not really an island, so eventually, the news of Towhee's altercation with Burke had reached the alpha female's ears. Finley had taken brief pauses from being with her children up until then, but this particular event felt like it warranted a bit more of an extended leave. 
Leaving the den for the first time after having her first two litters had felt like stepping into the sun and being able to breathe again after months underground. This time, as she walked away from @Raven and the kids, it felt like the opposite. A dour mood had settled on the Caldera, and even the air felt somehow stale with it. She'd done a decent job of remaining optimistic about their circumstances before this. Suddenly, that seemed naive and unforgivably foolish.

She found Towhee near the borders, lying in the shade of a tree. Had she always looked so skeletally thin? Fin frowned as her heart clenched with worry and guilt. How had she not noticed that things were this bad? She strode to the girl's side and reached to nuzzle the soft fur just behind her ear, dropping to her haunches as she did so, ignoring the subtle shift in the sky above that foretold of some pretty epic science-y shit about to go down.