Northstar Vale leave the lights on

strangely he appreciates queenie's distance. he doesn't think he could handle a heart to heart right now: much easier to focus on the practical. even if he doesn't want to that either. the way she says morwinyon makes him squirm.

"yeah," delight starts, stops, laughs hollowly. he can't quite joke back with her right now. "it's, uh. honestly? i have no idea." the easiest thing to do would be to blame the weird kids for disrupting things, blame the series of deaths, blame mato for abandoning him in the first place. blame the king elk for dying, for becoming a looming symbol of their own demise. but delight knows the real reason is him. his inadequacies. his failures. "i never... wanted to be morwinyon," he says, slowly, admitting it with ears laid back. "i always thought mato would, y'know. come back around. come back to his rightful place. not that i haven't tried, obviously, but i think i've always just been doing it for his sake. i don't know -- is it wrong to try and keep a pack running for the sake of a ghost?" 

tindómë is filled with ghosts, now. just that some of them aren't dead. and speaking of the not dead, not-yet-alive: the vale the way it is now -- not ideal for child rearing. hell, he can't do that to queenie. he thinks about alarian, ready and raring to get back to his pack, and fixes queenie with a cautious expression. a more selfless person would ask what she wants to do, but delight doesn't think he could stand it if her answer is "stay here and try to make it work." he's sick of trying to make it work. instead he says, voice quiet, "maybe we should take alarian back to his pack. and stay there."