Redhawk Caldera Die young.

She blinked slowly at her dead son. That he was dead was an irrefutable fact, yet Towhee struggled to grasp it. Like his siblings, he had been so animated just hours before. Now he was so still. And he would never move again. The impulse to deny it was strong, prompting her to nose at him again, a little more roughly this time, only to recoil from how unnaturally stiff he felt.

Unsure what to do and unable to look away despite herself, the Sovereign took a step backward away from the whole brood, only to move in again and begin nosing the others almost frantically. She earned an unheard grunt from Caracal, he and the twins all squirming a little in protest as she verified their livelihood. Very likely they would begin screaming and wake up the rest of those sleeping in the Hobbit Hole.

Towhee couldn't care about that. When she thought of the others, though, she did look upward and spotted Ruenna silhouetted in the doorway. "Rue," the Sovereign breathed, making a wounded noise. She had trouble finding her words beyond that. She was still trying to make sense of the situation and simply didn't have the faculties to relay the reality to anyone else just yet.

But she turned her fiery eyes upon her youngest son's tiny body and sighed, the noise pulling from some deep part of her. Little Marten would never see or hear, never grow, never meet his family or the world. Like Primrose before him, he had died much too young. Towhee couldn't fathom what had happened to him, though she felt a niggling sense of guilt. She was responsible for all the pups, so his death was on her.

That knowledge sank its teeth into her and the guilt was intense, made even worse by a small sense of relief she couldn't help when her exhaustion reminded her that it would be easier to rear three pups rather than four.