Whitebark Stream And go with you, I'll go with you

Pele was an observant, if relatively quiet child. She had witnessed her father’s coughing fits over the course of the last few weeks, but had said nothing of it to anyone. She was still a child, of course, and was not aware that she should be worried about something like that. But somehow, the coughing she had heard from him tonight had sounded worse. He’d had a harder time catching his breath, and so, when her mother went trailing after him, she’d followed behind from very far away, intending to watch over her father from a distance.

What had happened instead was like something out of a nightmare. She heard her father’s coughing fit once again, but then he’d gone quiet and she assumed that he had simply managed to catch his breath and had gone to sleep. She didn’t bother to check on him physically, for she was not supposed to wander too far away from their sleeping spot. But when she heard her mother’s cries, and then the struggle for air, she had come stumbling forward. She had witnessed her mother fall over, gasping for breath. It was as if some curse had afflicted first one parent, then the other. She was rooted to the ground and her mother did not notice her in the foliage. 

She stood there for some time afterwards, too numb to be aware of anything. And then her brother had come along. Her sweet, gentle brother. Her fucking idiotic bumbling brother. She saw him drop the flowers at her parents’ heads. Their dead heads. And then he… he curled up… under Grezig’s foreleg… 

“What the fuck,” she said—something both parents would have scolded her for. 

“Alsek!” she yelled, and stumbled forward on wobbly legs, the idea of getting closer to her parents making her feel sick. “Get away! No!” She leaned down, painfully aware of how close her mother’s body was, and snatched her brother by the scruff of the neck, yanking hard. He was bigger than her still, and always would be, so she failed in her attempt and only came away with a tuft of fur in her mouth. She fell over with an “Oof!” and sat down hard on her rump. “ALSEK!” she screeched, no longer truly coherent. “NO! BAD!”