Blackfeather Woods send help

you came from that. astute little girl, astara noted with a curve of her lips. she bowed her head once: yes, i did.

that rested firmly between her paws -- the slender arch of the mother that had bore her. how astara missed relmyna -- but she carried her mother with her always, in more ways than just blood. she had consumed her flesh once, and made altars of her bones -- and now, she was exhuming the priestess to bearclaw, where new spirits would come to rest among her bones.

why? was the unspoken question. astara had learned to read well the features of others, and blinked slowly as she considered how to answer. perhaps the girl would understand herself, if she grasped the motherbone and felt the voids' malcontent whispers.

loathe to give up her trinket, but knowing the ferocity the girl was capable if she did not, astara rolled the bone gently towards hela. it circled once in the snow, leaving a thin trail of its progress as it went -- and then clattered softly into the pale snowpack.