Bearclaw Valley those lions are coming, oh they're coming.

in her last moments, caiaphas saw him again. and merrick finally broke, dam shattering; he sobbed with sundered heart to see her go, pouring out the last vestiges of his living soul into the mud alongside her slight frame.
when she woke the woman would be gone;
her spirit has left her flesh, spake the bear, and the boy's weeping left him in small hurried shakings of his shoulders, little shudders as the eruption of his sorrow began to die beneath the earth of him.
caiaphas was gone, but she had not chosen to leave, and merrick comforted himself with this as his single eye rove tearful and solemn toward her quiet face.
indra had chosen to leave. nunataq had chosen to leave. perhaps tadec had done the same, but caiaphas had not.
mama was no more in the gnarled body that lay alongside him.
merrick rose. a single rivulet of salt had cut a dark sodden path through the fur of one cheek, but the boy swallowed his sobs and smiled once, tremulously, at the withered she-wolf who had shown him for a moment the only love he had ever wished for indra.
the glow of it died with her.
understanding that when she woke again it would not be caiaphas at all, merrick sighed heavily and stumbled unseeing away from the rawboned crumpled frame, heart weighed but knowing that for the first time he had not been knowingly abandoned.
each step a betrayal; twice he almost ran back to her. but he forced himself along, away away away away, until he came to stand alongside his glowering raven.
he faced away, distantly, pausing only a moment to convey he would depart now, before the ground began to course beneath merrick in a headlong run.