Hushed Willows oh, where are you now, pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?

✹☾❂

 

The boy seemed sad, which was totally reasonable, so Eleuthera did her best to tamp down her own elation and match the mood. Dead mothers were never a happy thing, she knew this well  — and it seemed this dark boy had come to reckon with his own. It was a process that she should not, and would not, stand in the way of. 

So, they weren’t officially siblings. Might as well be, Eleuthera considered. “Oh, Auntie Lily?" She knew Lily well as the valiant, dark-furred woman who had found the Hushed Willows in the first place. She was their fearless leader as they led a band of mothers and a gaggle of pups across the mountain range. She served upon Elysium’s council. And now, as Eleuthera had come to understand, Lily had died defending sanctuary until her very last breath. “I didn’t know she had pups." She had been a true seraph, through and through. 

If he was interested, and might find the coincidence uncanny, she chanced to offer him this next bit of information. “I’m one of Olive and Seabreeze’s kids, from before, when Elysium was still Bracken Sanctuary. " her tail wagged in familial recognition, only stilling when Sundance arrived and pulled up alongside her. He held back before another uncanny coincidence took the three wolves up in its grip.

Eleuthera figured it made sense that this ‘Cam’ and her brother would know each other, as they looked to be about the same age, but this was really the first time that Eleuthera had ever really considered that there was this entire part of Elysium that she would never know. Most of its history was something she would be told, not something she remembered.

It was more than what had happened to her mothers — Sundance had since cleared that up for her. Earthquakes, apparently, had been Elysium’s ultimate undoing. It was more that Eleuthera was saddened over having missed the pack, and her mothers, for what she considered to be its heyday. There was an entire generation she didn’t know, that had relationships she was not a part of, with memories in the willows that she would never understand. They saw mothers actually perish fighting the bear, whereas Eleuthera had only learned about it after the fact.

Sure, Séamus had brought her much happiness on the road, but it counted for little here, when she suddenly felt so alone amongst her (now) closest of kin.