Sunspire Mountains she slipped the lock, and changed her dress

Wylla drifted ghost-like from Sagtannet's borders as the afternoon grew late, scarcely noticing that she was leaving at all. By now, she was certain her son was dead. There was no body to bury, but it'd been over a month since any trace of him had been found in spite of multiple wolves looking. Mahler had sent one of their newer wolves out to search the world beyond. They searched the territory daily. Wylla searched beyond the borders almost as frequently, but never going far. Phaedra needed her close.

Phaedra needed her, but her legs kept moving, reaching unbeknownst for the distant sea, that she might disappear into it and never emerge again. If she kept going in this direction, she would reach the shore, and maybe find comfort in the endless fathoms. There she might die with a smile on her lips, bitter as it might be.

That was the song of her subconscious. Wylla remained unconscious to the depths of her despondency even as she descended one rise and ascended another, walking well into the evening with no destination in mind. She should return, but turning back felt impossible. For Phaedra, her mind pleaded, but another voice was quick to say, Phaedra hates you, too. It wasn't true, but something had changed recently that made her feel that way. Her daughter avoided her—it was the last blow her heart could take, and so she wandered, lost.

Unlike the slight wolf bent over the stream, Wylla was completely unaware of her surroundings, a new development for such a typically paranoid creature. She padded through the trees with a vacant stare, drawn to the sound of water only for its familiarity, and at first she didn't even notice the ghost of her past standing there when she bent to lap at the water. When she lifted her snout again and marked the dark wolf across the way, Wylla blinked slowly, eyes wandering over a terribly familiar white blotch on her chest, and spoke not with the disbelief that was appropriate to this situation, but with a deadpan lack of emotion: Tiercel?

Because her first-born daughter was long gone. This was merely a hallucination, born of a hope she no longer deserved to hold.