Redhawk Caldera WSS: Prologue

She thought she knew the answer—he was here for Fennec or Fig or Niamh, not his afterthought younger siblings—but that wasn't what he said at all, and it surprised her. Alyx was old enough now to know that he was probably just saying that because it's what she wanted to hear, but if there was even a sliver of truth to it, she appreciated it. In some ways, she still looked up to her older siblings in ways she didn't look up to her mother, and wasn't sure about looking up to her father, so any little bit of care from them was difficult to ignore.

Yup. You have. She wasn't going to sugar coat that, at least. Alyx wasn't going to pretend it was okay that he'd just up and left them without any explanation to follow Meerkat to Moonmoon Mountain, and sadly, she was more like her mother than she realized when it came to smoothing things like this over. She just didn't do it. She was enough like Phox not to be overly scathing about it, at least, although when he said he had to go, she couldn't help but snort.

We know why you went. Meerkat's the best, blahblah, everyone's favourite, blahblahblah, Meerkat has no one and needed you more than us, blahblah, best bro 2020. Over and out. You could have at least said a proper goodbye after promising to be here and then breaking it. She didn't mean to shame him, but that was simply the narrative she'd been told or at least the one she'd constructed from the bits and pieces she'd been told, and it still stunk that he hadn't been much of a brother about it. Instead there'd just been a brief congregation with Meerkat and that was that. He'd visited, but not really for them.