Arrow Lake this empty northern hemisphere

for @Praimfaya

He'd kept himself far away from his father's resting place. Even when trailing after Stag or one of the other kids, he'd always hang back and resume his lurking when they were a safe distance from the place where their father's blood mixed with the mountain soil. Mesa couldn't help it; he was still strongly in denial about the whole thing, even if the truth was right there - he was hurting too much, and wouldn't let himself think about how absent his father was.

Except of course, his mind ticked back to the first moment after someone told him of Stigmata's death. Sometimes he could go a whole hour without thinking about him, but that often led to a blossoming guilt, like he'd let himself forget and then... Then, there came anger. A self-imposed rage, the inconsolable, incongruent feeling of betrayal which he couldn't detach from the adamant nature of his spirit. Had he betrayed his father in that moment, in letting himself be distracted, in forgetting? Or had his father betrayed him - betrayed all of them - for letting the mountain take his life?

It was all too much, and too heavy.

Mesa was nearby where his father's grave sat, but he didn't dare approach it. He nosed around one of the newer caches as if he had any appetite at all, and began to dig. His broad paws made short work of the already soft soil, dredging up the carcass of a freshly killed rabbit. The scent of its blood was intense; the look of its decomposing face, dessicated by the dirt, blanched Mesa's own expression and he stared down at it emotionlessly. Somewhere in his head he was making the connection that this was what his father looked like. He was nothing, now. He was meat.

Turning from the cache in a sudden flurry, Mesa dry heaved in to the grass.