Porcupine Ridge but i am drifting

maybe they thought they'd learn faster on their own.

an old, nagging thought returned to indra as marten finished, and while she was loathe to let such thoughts inhabit her consciousness, they did so with annoying frequency. like a cobweb might settle out of reach in a high rafter above, indra's darker thoughts collected well beyond her sphere of cognizance, drifting, gaining premise and volition until like an overweighed bough, they came to the forefront with splintering reckoning.

it was possible they had no choice in their departures, a thought indra had dreaded each time it rose: that they might have been stolen, thieved, purloined, gutted, or killed -- she thought of the beast that had taken her tail, the black realm beyond the kintla decorated by the innards of the deceased, the cruel men that had chased her across the hinterlands -- these men were certainly capable of such violence, and she, an adult, had only scarcely avoided having her life claimed from her.

a puppy was a far easier conquest.

she looked to marten guiltily then, for she was about to impart no small token of wisdom to his world -- and it was likely what she said would be irrevocable, that his innocent mind might suffer like a stone thrown across fragile ice to corrupt and sink into dark waters. "they may not have been able to say goodbye. there are many things in the wild that hunger to kill, and do so indiscriminately. all it takes is to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time." she blinked slowly, a long sigh drawn from her thin lips. "when one ponders the perplexity of the inexplicable -- a question they cannot answer, or one that seems without clues in which to guide you -- remember, the easiest explanation often correlates with the event's conclusion. meaning, the most likely answer is the one that is most easily explained..

so, a pronged question such as: why did lucas disappear? why was it with no warning, when it was neither his disposition nor his type to do so? and why were there no signs of his disappearance? a babe is easy to track in the woods, and yet, he left nothing.

the simple answer would be that it was not of his accord that he left -- either something ate him, or he was killed."