Stone Circle she's got her eyes fixed on the floor

skipping alsek w permission!

casualties

she is vaguely aware of releasing a strangled gasp and yet it sounds so very distant, whisked away by this eddying, surreal haze. and all that she can think is; why on earth does death need another term? who the hell came along and decided 'i'm sick of saying dead and died, let's spice things up with a new word'. it sparks irrational anger within her and she is fueled with a desperate need to find this someone and scream at them for thinking themselves moxie enough to simply get bored of the term dead. how could you ever find such a calamitous event to be too tedious and in need of an upgrade? 

and so she spirals into this absurd rage, mentally declaring that nanook and kaito deserve to have the unfair robbery of their lives labeled correctly as dead. they are dead, not some casualty no they are DEAD. dead like papa, dead like that fledgeling she'd buried, as dead as the elk these wolves fed on to live. her chin trembled. their vessels obsolete, souls gone, forever. 

forever was a really, really long fucking time. 

mournful eyes pressed hard upon the lenient valette, a little bewildered by the mundane nature of her question. how is it that she remained so cordial in the face of such tragedy? and why is it that polaris felt as if it would take the mere push of a sprightly beeze to tear her apart and scatter dejected remains across the valley? shoulders sag as she blinks rapidly, trying hard to clear the twisting fog from her mind and blink upon alsek. poor kid, what did he see in this cowardly shell of misery that made him follow her so? "this is alsek, my..he's my brother"

she needs to say something, something about the attack, about their loss. shit she needs to say something about hers too and yet she just cannot, her mind sneers back as she attempts to rifle through for words...the right words, the kind of composed and shrewd things you were supposed to say.

but she..she failed, she couldn't. under the scrutiny of valette's curious look she crumpled, unable to hold onto that shriveling string of maturity that had guided her and alsek here. with him she'd been the closest thing to an adult but now, here, with the closest thing left she had to a parental figure...she was just a kid. 

in the end, she was not brave or blinding like the burning sun. 
she was meek and pained and terrified by the fragility of those you loved.

all she asked was; "does it get easier valette? losing someone, please tell me it gets easier than this."