Hushed Willows Let go of the moment that life makes you hold

Oh great, he didn't leave fast enough, and he still had a pup kind of following him.  Mal was all ready to have some sort of snipe at the witches who ran the pack, but didn't have that chance, even as he slowly started away.  What she said wasn't what he was expecting.  He gave the woman who appeared a look that couldn't be translated as anything other than, "Who the hell are you?"  You know, that sort of disgusted/"you are obviously unimportant if you don't know who I am" kind of look.  He'd lived in this pack his whole life up until a month or so ago. He'd even come back to check on things.  It wasn't like he was one of a dozen similar looking wolves in the pack, either.  It just confirmed that all ties had been cut here.  Whoever this wench was, it was probably good that Mal was well on his way out already and he hadn't gone deeper into the territory to scour for his sister, despite having every right (in his eyes at least) to go look for her.

However, Atwood proved to at least be a little amusing in his response.  Apparently this woman didn't have the kid's favor either, given the fact he seemed to prefer a complete stranger over her.  His smirk at that was short lived.  Yeah, he was a ghost, and gonna spook right outta here. Obviously not, if you can't keep a single wolf safe here, was his barbed response.  It was, of course, referencing Brilliance's absence rather than the others that had died -- the only one he noticed or cared about -- but something had to have happened for her to just leave.  She'd be over at Diaspora by now, surely.  It was just a particularly brutal consequence that the chance was there to misunderstand.  Mal wasn't particularly interested in sticking around, so he was ok leaving things at that, turning more directly away from the pack and starting to walk away.  This was such a waste.  They'd be their own demise or something equally fatalistic.