King Elk Forest past the wondering eyes of the ones that were left behind

the certainty delight felt in tindómë's future had been swept from beneath his feet in one strike, leaving him scrabbling for any sense of control. burke's death had been imminent but it's arrival is no less devastating; he had known brienne would be leaving them but the timing. he needs mato --

-- who is unavailable. he feels the start of something bitter in his throat and swallows it down quickly. there's no time for that. they need to organize some sort of.. something, a goodbye to burke, a proper one (even though, he thinks nastily, everyone who knew burke is long gone or absent now). delight will just have to figure it out on his own.

the frail sounding howl breaks his thoughts. it takes a second to place it and then he takes off, quickly arriving on the scene with a breathless "anatha?" the girl's absence had been taken to be yet another in a series of abandonments, a bit of a sting, but, well, it wasn't the first time. but now he wonders if this is a repeat of what happened to brienne, and if yet again he's failed a packmate in not sending out a search. she doesn't look well, exactly, though she seems uninjured from what he can see. "where did you go?" the morwinyon asks, his tone not one of scolding or anger, but a softer, more worried thing.