Redhawk Caldera Fwoosh

CODEZ U SKIPPER U lol

Fin had never felt so empty in all her life as in that moment when Lucy looked at her as though she were a stranger. It wasn't heartbreak. It wasn't overwhelming sadness or pain or.. anything. It was nothing. There was no air, no feeling. There wasn't even a heart or stomach or lungs inside of her anymore. It was just an empty void, as though the three words her daughter had uttered had poked a black hole right into her chest and all that Fin was had been swept away into it, leaving only an old shell behind.

The moment passed. Her eyes shifted as Lucy stepped back into a wolf almost blindingly white against her black. She noted the protectiveness in his gesture as he shifted forward. He needn't have given the signs of his submission to assure her there was no threat there. He was inconsequential, as was the other one. Only Lucy mattered. Lucy who didn't know her. What had happened?

She pushed the questions away abruptly, not wanting to waste time on them. There were many, of course, and they were screaming to be heard. They were for later though. Her daughter - or maybe the ghost of her daughter - had asked her a question. "I'm Finley Blackthorn, alpha of this territory," she answered softly with a calming confidence in her voice that she did not truly feel on the inside, "This is Redhawk Caldera." It felt so unbelievably wrong to answer as though this were just a stranger stopping in to say hello. But maybe that's all this was to them. But how? What were they even doing here if not to bring Lucy home?

She silenced herself again and watched for some spark or glimmer of memory on Lucy's face, her desperation for it masked beneath her eyes.