Heron Lake Plateau awaiting your mistake

Her words were the pinprick that pierced the canker sore and allowed the infection to come out -- as soon as she broke the silence, Titmouse gave voice to all the jumbled-up mess and confusion inside him. She felt a lot of things as he spoke, but most of all, she felt terrible for him. She was a fully-grown adult and, while she'd never considered herself the brightest crayon in the box, she ought to have known better than to hang around him while she was in heat.

She had put him in that position, and now he had to live with what he'd done forever.

When he finally halted mid-sentence, Raven looked at him with so much compassion in her eyes, a sad smile on her face. "It wasn't your fault, Screech," she said softly, shaking her head. "You didn't do anything wrong. It was my fault. I never should have put you in that situation." He was only doing what nature had programmed him to do. It was biology, and he was still too young yet to know how to control it. As broken and misguided as her little brother was, it pained her that she had directly played a part in making him even more lost and fucked-up. She was supposed to protect and nurture him, and she had never failed more spectacularly at anything else in her life than she had at that.