Whitebark Stream I will still come around when the time for sleep is through

maybe @Célness? but AW!

slowly, the worse of her wounds seek to knit finally together, and it is rare now that she manages to break open the careful network of scabs covering the worst of them. still, she is made dull and silent by the news besides; of aphrodite's death, and sunny's. she is the last of her immediate family; she has survived fire and famine, cruelty and the cruel, loss and the quakes that had torn apart the land on which they'd made their home. for what? comes that whisper at the back of her mind.

it is wrong, surely. she has her children, her mate, and what remains of her pack. but she is ready, waiting, for the other shoe to drop. for her children now to disappear as had her first litter, for artyom to encounter some terrible fate, for the last of her people to fade away. and then what? surely she will pick up again, move on, as she always has. and once more the cycle will repeat, and she will be left with a little less of herself, sharper and more fragile shards to pierce together. she has not yet seen her fourth year, and already she is tired, aching. 

she remembers her last conversation with Valiant, and knows it is his time to be tough, now. she'd never wanted him to have to be, so soon least of all. had she known the truth of it; she would have hated her brother. for abandoning his family, choosing the coward's option when living was so infinitely harder. but the true circumstances of his death will never be known to her, and in many ways, the decisions and actions he'd chosen in life. perhaps it was better, than, that she remember @Sunny as an incomplete mosaic, blurred memories and interpretations. 

her trail takes her past aphrodite's den, where now Juniper seems to spend most of her time searching through the herbs and plants gathered there. she doesn't like it, the way her daughter lingers so long at that place, the way she's been made quieter, faded. it is only another reminder of her failure to protect and shield her brood from such things. her daughter has questions she can not answer, though today the cream-coloured pup is absent from the den. with a sigh, the matriarch, moves toward the mouth of it, in search of the nameless herbs he knows only by scent. she'd managed to absorb some knowledge over countless months and countless injuries, and it after a moment that she manages to locate and withdraw a sprig of marigold from the den, where now the scent of her daughter is stronger than that of her mentor's.