Whitebark Stream I walk a lonely road....

gone a month. her throat tightens; with all the ill-fortune, she'd assumed he'd been out scouting, or hunting. she ought to have paid more attention, she ought to—

something greater stirred, and the matriarch exhaled, pushing it down. "did he give any reason for being out of the territory? any indication of where he might have gone?" she remains close by the woman, a literal shoulder to cry on, but she does not allow a trace of worry, panic, to show. she's been through this far too many times already, made too many mistakes to let her handling of this be another one.