Stone Circle i. you were loved

Green! Green was a great color. It was all over the place. "You get to see your favorite color all the time," he told the other boy, trotting so that he could keep up with him. Ikiaq was a late bloomer, his legs still unfortunately rather short, so it took a bit of effort, but he managed. 

Iki looked over to Rose when he spoke again, his fuzzy brown head tilted to the side. Not possible for so many things to die at once? Ikiaq tried not to think too much about death. He knew it had happened around him - multiple wolves, on the same night. Of course, he hadn't seen anything, but the smell and the sounds were still vivid in his mind. There'd been a monster, and his mother had tried to fight it, and she'd won, but she'd also lost. It had been loud, and the smell of blood was thick...

The boy blinked a couple times to snap himself out of it. It wasn't something he liked to think about. It made him sad - made it hard to move. So it was often pushed to the back of his mind. 

"I hope they stay all year," he said aloud, padding up to press his side against the other boy's. Rose looked so... sad, all of a sudden. And he wanted to fix that. "I bet they will! And... there's cold stuff that's gonna fall from the sky and make everything white and the flowers would probably look really pretty." Was he talking too much? Probably. But it was a nice distraction - for himself, because hey, they were crossing the border and that was so stressful and his heart was pounding in his chest. But he was also trying to help Rose, too. Ikiaq didn't know about the other boy's parents - just his own mother - but perhaps if he did he might find that they had a lot in common.