Heron Lake Plateau If we pass in the night then just hand me a light

He did hope that Colt would end up not too far away.  Even if recently they had kind of grown a bit more distant, knowing Colt was around to bug at some point later would kind of be nice.  Slow exhale and a nod.  As I think I said, you're always welcome back if things bring you back this way.  Can always work out the details then.  And he'd miss Colt, not that Quixote would actually say that because he was an emotionally-stunted idiot, but hey.  Colt could probably figure that out (both aspects), regardless.

This whole thing seemed unavoidable but it was all squarely on Niamh's head.  Why couldn't she have stayed missing a little longer? Why couldn't Colt have come back first?  That would have been a much better way to handle things.  Maybe he should have just booted Niamh and let Colt stay instead -- but he was pretty sure he'd have Towhee and Phox trying to chew his head off 4.3 seconds after they found out and that would have just been travel time.  The pack wasn't without problems, and some of them weren't easy to solve -- he didn't like how this was ending.