Stone Circle shadows all around you as you surface from the dark

Merrit listened to every word she said, and every word she left unspoken. He felt a familiar pain twist within his chest when his mother spoke of Greyback, and how the patriarch had stuck around -- and how he helped, in ways his father never had. A part of Merrit still thought it unfair that it had to be Greyback and not Stark who was with his mother now; the prince wanted to believe that his father would have helped her, too, if he hadn't been so sick. That he would have stayed. That there must have been a reason for him to leave, in the way that he had.

But in this case, Stark's silence spoke. Merrit would never know what father would have done. He would only ever know what he did, what he failed to do, and what Greyback had accomplished in his place. Everything Greyback was, Stark should have been, and Merrit still wished to hear his father's name in place of the man who had succeeded him in every better way.

He almost missed her questions, but her voice shifted enough for him to catch onto the queries she raised. Still, he met her with a distracted, "Hmm?" before he realized what she had asked, and amended with a quick, "Oh - yes. Of course. And - I'm glad you've been supported here," he added as an afterthought. Everything aside, he was thankful.

"I didn't find father," he decided to get that out of the way before he spoke of anything else, "But I realized that while I was looking for him, I failed to see the wolves who cared about me here. The wolves I care about, too," he continued watching the sunset, but squinted, "And once I realized that, there was no other way for me but to come back. To live better this time." He had come to see how as well; he had asked his mother about trades before, but their conversation had never moved much beyond words. He was ready for that to be different now. "I would like to learn our history," and if any wolf could teach him that, that wolf would be Valette, "I would like to learn how to heal. I would like to learn how to fight and defend. And I would like to learn how to lead."