Heron Lake Plateau Can't live without them, can't kill them with an axe

Hell.  If he hasn't come back...  Quixote really wasn't going to have good news, then.  It could be worse, of course, but he was pretty sure that just the unknown was going to be enough of a weight by itself.  And yeah, he'd pretty much given away something being wrong -- Quixote was not a good actor.

At the very least Quixote was honest.  This wasn't a situation where lying would make anything better, where being too optimistic would help more than hurt if it turned worse in the end.  It looked bad, but there was no confirmation that the worst had happened.  It was possible that they'd fought to a bit of a stalemate, then crawled off in different directions.  The stupid goddamn snow and rain..!  It just left more questions.  At least there was one thing that he could confirm that maybe would help a tiny bit -- that he'd not found a body.  Sigh.  Found a scene over in the thicket.  He's not there, but I think he got attacked.  It was a few days ago and with this weather we've had I can't tell exactly what happened, but there's no Ambrose, no cat.  I've seen enough in the past that I don't think it's enough to be-- well -- fatal, but water's messed it up bad.  Really he also couldn't be sure there wasn't a second scene farther away in some random direction where maybe there was a body, but he wasn't going to say that.  What he'd found was bad enough on its own.  The alpha was sympathetic, but didn't know what really to do to make any of this better.  It wasn't something that would be easily fixed unless her brother wandered back on his own.  I don't know where he went, Niamh.