Blacktail Deer Plateau From Under the Floorboards

Though Svalinn could act for a moment that things would be better from now on, there was a cold, vacuous part of him that couldn't enjoy Raleska's affection; the same part of him that dreaded her asking the inevitable. All of him started to quiver as she spoke it, and the tattered fiend turned his sullen muzzle away from her in shame. I... He wanted to lie— surely he could get away with it— but as he noticed the backside of a retreating Tunerk, he felt the resolve to hide from his sister gently fade away. I let Ma die, he admitted in a hush, and then louder: I left our Mother to die. The truth of it.

He melted to the frigid ground, weakened by both his admission and overextending himself upon greeting her. He lay ragdoll before her, supplicant and welcome to her ire. When his throat wasn't immediately torn out, he began to recount dully: I went to find her— you know I couldn't just let her go off with that cliff wolf— and she was hurt real bad by the time I found her. I tried, I did, I really tried to take care of her, but she just got sick, and her wounds... they smelled like... Death he didn't want to say, but in not knowing another word for it either, he instead opted to engage in an estranged silence. Svalinn swallowed the dry lump in his throat, and tasted bile.

I was scared, Les... Her breathing would get so low, and I wasn't hunting well enough to keep us both fed, even before everything else started going to shit, and— What more could I have done? I was a coward. I left her because I couldn't watch her die, and I've been paying for it since. He needn't mention all the scraps and carcass-wars he'd endured since their separation. His skin-torn body told that part of the story on its own. I was too ashamed of what I'd done to come back and tell you... but then the ground started shaking. And you were all I could think about.

He looked up at her— a haunted and broken shell at her feet— and his chestnut eyes implored her to end his misery. His life, as he saw no use for it himself, was now hers to do with as she pleased. Svalinn had come back for her, just her, and he would die if that was what she thought he deserved too.