Phoenix Maplewood All that was once so beautiful is dead

Oh - she didn't need to eavesdrop at all. Kasatka sat very still between the two beloved men, fighting grief and feeling very grown up to have been included in the conversation. Despite the way they danced around the issues, never quite naming what was in their hearts, Kasatka understood that her uncle and aunt were probably dead. Dead was - it was not good, but it was something she understood. Something that seemed less unsurmountable than missing, somehow. You always had to wonder when people were just missing.

She thought most about her brother's mate. Kasatka hadn't known Aliac well or anything, but she was young, right? Everyone knew that Adults had to die. But kids didn't, did they? She and River and 'Tide hadn't. They'd just been lost.

"Aliac is probably just lost like River and Timber were," she said to her brother, and felt at once that the words were childish and unhelpful. But maybe that was part of being a kid - someone had to say these things, right? Someone had to keep the faith. "And we all came back when it was time, right?" she pressed on, looking between the two. "Maybe it's just not time, and we have to... we have to..." 

But there was nothing for it. Missing was definitely worse.