Moonspear oceans & full moons, deep midnight blue

Hydra had gone to Lyra with an aching chest. 

The prognosis was nothing terminal, though it felt it. You are probably heartsick, Lyra advised. It sounded fatal, but Lyra clarified the meaning of it all. She grit her teeth to hear that she might miss one wolf so much. It was different losing someone to death than this awfully made choice. Death was permanent. Arcturus was alive, which she was glad for, but he was out there... not here. Where he should be. If he had left for different reasons, Hydra would still feel saddened for it but at the very least come to accept it by now. This, every bit of the way he went, was wrong. Arcturus was wrong. 

It was best he left though, she had come to accept. If he could so swiftly be turned and turn his back on them all in such a way, he could not be here in such a time. He had been ready to strike her down. His self-importance was to the point where he forgot the rest of the world was still moving while he went down the road he was supposed to know better than to travel. He was meant to be smart, clever. But he went down some rabbit hole at the most convenient of times: when they might need him most. 

Hydra had become numb, but the edges of anger lingered there. Anger was slow to come this time as she yearned to understand. What would mother say? Father? She did not even mean as leaders, but as parents to her. Her father would likely say that Arcturus was an idiot, and to forget about him for a while. Her mother would likely feel as bothered as she that it had been so easy for him to turn his back on them... for what? 

For nothing. 

She withheld a snort. The event would not reduce her; she maintained her dignity. Sleet came then, and Hydra sighed. She did not mind Winter, but once the entirety of the chilly season passed she would be glad to shed the season and the memories best left behind. 

Fuck this place, she remembered him saying, the sound akin to a gunshot. 

It all kept replaying. And anger inched its way further, oozing behind the brick and mortar and steel that again rose over a new, gnarled place upon her heart. Her ears backturned as she thought she heard the approach of another, and her gaze sought who. It was Jarilo, and her tail waved to see him there. Of all her brothers, she had never lost faith in him. Not even once. It made her consider some things in silence. Seeing him there was somehow a relief; her eyes softened, and she greeted him with a low humming noise in her throat and a slowly swaying tail.