Herbalists' Cache What a find

Shock morphed into exasperation, and he gave her a stunned stare, taking in her words. Tell me something. Those words rattled around in his head, incessant. Exasperation gave way to anger, and he took a step back from her, brows drawing down and together as he frowned.

"I have told you something--I told you everything!" Shale snapped, his copper gaze growing darker still. "About how I watched my own children, my own wife, starve--and I was powerless to stop it. I fucking told you! You knew before everyone here. Even Grayday."

He stalked away, taking a few heated steps before turning back, looking at her, his face drawn. "How can you not understand?" he demanded, continuing to pace back and forth before her. "You don't just forget something like that, you don't just move on from seeing something like that. You can't--stop--seeing--it!" His voice, which started out low, rose to a harsh tenor yell with his last utterance, each word vicious and percussive.

Shale let out a breath much like a sob, hanging his head, staring at the ground. Then he looked at her, and said, "And every time I think of you the way I think of her, I see you die, too." He swallowed thickly. "And I'm powerless to stop it."

With one final, angry lash of his tail, he trotted out of the forest, leaving Pema to digest the gravity of both his words and the tone in which he'd delivered them.