Otter Creek It always runs back but it's never quite the same

She dipped her head. Thank you. It helped to know others would be keeping an eye out. She was only one wolf and could only search so much. Getting lost seemed liked something children liked to do from the sound of it. She wished that made her feel like less of a failure, but she wasn't sure anything could do that.

Her face twisted in pain, a rare moment of empathy from the northerner, at least for a stranger. There was a possibility that one of her missing children could actually be dead; it was not something she tried to think much about because anytime the thought lingered in the back of her mind, it felt like someone was ripping her heart from her chest. To actually see one of them with the same lifeless expression she had seen on their father's face—she couldn't bear it. She swallowed the lump of despair and tried to push the thought away, although she feared it would hang around in her mind for a while. That is...awful, she managed to say. She was never very good with these situations even if she knew exactly how the other mother was feeling. The ones that are lost, she continued, eager to offer something in return. If you tell me what they look like, I can keep an eye out for them as well. It was only fair since she had offered to do the same.