Heron Lake Plateau two black eyes from loving too hard

 

Dated for 7/15/18.

Niamh was leadership now, and it hurt Ceara more than she wanted to admit.  Ceara didn't think that it was herself that should have been promoted; she understood she had no business in a leadership role, still too young and too easily inflamed to handle that kind of responsibility.  But Niamh seemed, somehow, like an even worse choice.  Niamh had pulled rank upon Ceara for just asking a question and although she had put that behind her, she had to wonder if it would happen again now that she had any kind of real power.

Not that she'd ever voice these concerns.  Truly there were a number of brewing feelings that she'd kept buried in front of @Raven.  She couldn't help feeling left out here, much as she had with the brat pack she'd hailed from inbetween the Blackthorns and the Redhawks.  Niamh got to be cool.  She was invited to the party to hunt down Screech.  She had been the one to find Towhee after she'd fallen onto that ledge.  She was now on an ever-important pack mission to Moonspear (which Ceara only vaguely remembered from the conglomerate of war-information that Quixote had given her).

Worse than that, it was safe to assume that she and Colt were an item now.  It was something she wished to put from her mind, best she could, but like a pink elephant it kept coming back, and the more she thought about it the more lousy and unwanted she felt.

But even larger than all of that was a mess of emotion brewing inside of her that revolved around the black-furred alphess herself that was too large and messy for her to even begin to untangle.  Every time she found Raven alone she wished to soak up her time, every time she touched her it was like a million tiny fireworks exploded in her nerve endings.

She loved Raven more than she had ever loved anyone before her.  Siarut had left, Screech had turned out to be someone that nobody thought he could be, and Sunny.. well, he'd been a decision in the moment that she regretted ever since.  Raven made Ceara feel valued, made her feel loved and appreciated.  And that wasn't fair to Raven, that wasn't fair to Quixote, and it damn well wasn't fair to herself.  She couldn't go through that kind of humiliation again after Sunny — had she known about her rival-slash-crush getting with her brother, she would've felt this tenfold.

So finally, she withdrew from the last person she had in the Plateau, and she would use Niamh's promotion as her excuse.  

Beneath the receding temperatures of dusk she stood at the edge of the plateau, a goose dangling limp from her jaws.  It was one of many she'd caught today; she'd worked from the moment news had reached her about Niamh's promotion.  She thought hunting would burn some of the excess energy, but it only seemed to make her more restless.

Unable to pant with the goose in her mouth, she abruptly dropped it and stood panting haggard and worn, the setting sun at her back.