Horizon Ridge You like to drink and to smoke to take away the pain

green? he hadn't expected that. it was disappointing, truly, and he was trying to picture a color even brighter than grass—how?!—when the girl called out a single word that made his heart stop.

then rosalyn was coming up the slope, calling the name he'd missed before (nieve, short like his own), and they were embracing, and questions were asked, and, and, and—

cam turned away, feeling hot tears of something akin to anger well up in his eyes. the happiness that should have been there for the mother and daughter was absent; instead, he only felt bitterness that a similar reunion with mummy would never happen. because she was sleeping—no. dead. dead forever.

he looked at the ground, focused intensely on a small, jagged pebble so that he did not openly weep. still, a few wayward tears spilled over, darkening his already black face, and his muzzle twisted into a scowl.