Silvertip Mountain you're beside me, breathing so loud

The touch of her mother was simultaneously electrifying and calming, the movements of the woman by her side so familiar. Surely this could not be death? Did not death come in silence, senses dulled and dimed until no longer could one touch and feel and see? Perhaps she was wrong; about death, though she'd imagined it time and time again, until the thought of it seemed almost like a memory. But here was touch and the pleading whine of her mother, and perhaps she truly was not alone. Her own whine broke the harshness of her throat, tugging itself from her maw with a strained sound. She twisted, attempting to bury her muzzle in her mother's fur, not knowing how it came to be that her heart soared and plummeted in a single moment. 

And no longer could she be swiftly scuffed away by the wilds and the way of things, for here was Olive, wrapping herself around the star-speckled girl in a way that did not allow her to simply fade away. The girl's heart beat faster, and another whine slipped past her lips as she pressed against her mother; for a moment she was a child and this mountain was not Silvertip but Moonspear, and all was alright. Shaky breath escaped the girl and the moment shattered, and already the familiar words rested on her tongue.

And yet they died there, the simple I'm sorry. She'd said them to Screech, to Vaati, to the deformed girl as she slept. To Cyron, as he was carried away to uncertain fate, and to all the other's she'd failed, she'd uttered the simply apology. But she had failed her mother once already, and the words carried with them too much failure for her to dare try them again against the silence. Her mother's face against her own, her scent, so familiar and so alien, here in this place. 

 "mother," she repeated, word firmer, steadier now. And then, word vulnerable and open, she whispered only, "I have failed." She had; her youth had been a catastrophy painted with darkness and cowardice, foolishness and twisted love. Her apology bit at her tongue but did not pass her lips; for surely it was a tainted word, a weak one. Still she pressed against her mother, wishing desperately for Moonspear, the time before; where things had been wrong and yet not as terrible as her life had become, when her failings lay mostly in the future and the lived in aloof, blissful ignorance.