Stone Circle my beating heart grew still

Children Riley's age were often rambunctious and spirited -- they often were shielded from the cruelties of the world, and had so very few poor or miserable experiences to color their disposition. Yet whatever fates controlled the ledger that swung in Riley's life (and by proxy, Laurel and Indra's too) seemed inordinately biased towards misfortune. Already at nearly six months of age Riley had collected all manner of trauma and bad luck, and today seemed no different. 

Riley had seen his mother from a distance, and had been drawn close by the obscured carcass she carried. At first he had believed it food, and strode towards his mother with a cocksure swagger, salivating at the mouth with his tail held proudly. As the one to always eat first, Riley confidently went to seige the dead -- completely ignoring the distraught nature of his mother, and the oddly blazing russet fur that was all too familiar. 

Indra. 

He stopped midstride, hunger conflicting with confusion. There was no love lost between child and his aunt -- and he had little faculties for sympathy here -- but he could not understand why, if his aunt was dead, that Laurel bothered to drag her body back all this way.

Deciding the reason was unimportant, and his hunger paramount, Riley bullishly lunged for hide, gobs of scarcely withheld drool swinging from his slavering maw.