Swiftcurrent Creek You Don't Tug on Superman's Cape; You Don't Spit Into the Wind

It took her a moment to register her brother's presence. She stared at Viinturuth in bewildered uncomprehension, offering no resistance, no return of his playfully bantering motions—she let his nip land, and barely even felt the teasing tug upon her fur, when ordinarily that would have been sure cause for swift and vengeful retaliation escalating into all-out puppy war.

Her brother's question fell clear enough upon her ears, but it took Talos a moment to comprehend, and another to remember how to work her own voice. Her habitually lazy elocution was never the clearest, but the emotions throttling her from within made the croaked syllables even more garbled than usual. Viint— dih... didya see... Talos turned her eyes back to whence she had last spotted her father, but he and his companion had disappeared from view. The big pup with the coal fur turned with equally helpless confusion to look back over her shoulder in the direction their mother had stalked off in, next, but of course she was longer gone yet. And Viin hadn't heard...hadn't seen... Talos sat there struggling to find the words to encompass the enormity of it all. As she turned back to her eldest brother a foreign emotion glittered in her eyes amidst the dark maelstrom brewing: fear.

...Therwarra...Mom...Da'... bwehn Ar'ya wennin... A fresh wave of feeling crashed over Talos and she buried her nose between her enormous front paws. It was too much, far too much to try and feel all at once, much less describe. And it hurt to even try, hurt like nothing else she'd ever felt before in her life. Oh sun and moon and stars make it STOP, she pleaded wordlessly. Maybe if all these emotions would just stop for even a few heartbeats she could wrap her mind around what she had seen, and find the right words to match. But no such mercies were offered. She tried miserably anyway, wretchedly thinking that not only was this something her sibling needed to know too, but that perhaps if he too could share in her horrible discovery he might take up his own share of the pain and confusion and thereby lessen the load upon Talos herself, somehow. They lef'! she burst out, squinching her eyes shut and tasting dirt but not caring. They wennan' lef' an' Momma shou'sa Dad don' love er'an'anan Aria— With a throaty and terrible half-sob, half-wail she at last moved toward her brother, to throw herself upon his wintry pelt in weepy distress, for once not aiming for any sort of physical advantage but nonetheless likely to half-smother the poor guy seeing as her weight class remained so much greater than his, despite the teenage lengthening and attenuation her bones too were undergoing.