Lost Creek Hollow tearing into me without teeth

she crosses the border with relief, bone-aching weariness that has little to do with physical exhaustion dogging her step. the forest closes up overhead, and one of the boughs carries some of the first buds of the season. some of the pawprints behind her are touched with rust; the blood is not her own. she deposites herself atop a small knoll a short destance from the border, at a loss. everything still seems not-entirely-real, and dimly she remembers someone - Sunny? Adi? talking to the sky and stars. it helped, they'd said, to talk to the dead. it seemed stupid. and besides, overhead the sky was still lit by the evening sun. still - for a moment, she imagined Aviana, pheasant clutched in her jaws and grin on her muzzle. Grayday, her father at her side and telling her about something Easy had done as a child. she couldn't bring herself to talk to them, but she could picture them here with her, indistinct and already falling prey to the erosion of memory. 

she began cleaning away the blood she'd stepped in, the taste of it betweeen her toes foreign and reminding her all to clearly of the boy she barely knew throwing himself at the body of the dead woman. she hadn't been taken by fire or illness, but anoher wolf. it should have dismayed her, but she felt only dull recognition at this fact. she moved up her leg, to her shoulder and the stop she could never reach. maybe she should have should have stayed with Sunny, and not distanced herself from the last family she had left. maybe she should stop wallowing in grief and bond more deeply with her packmates. maybe.