Bearclaw Valley her perfume and her rum

blessed son! blessed boy! merrick was filled with pride anew in aventus, for he saw in the boy that he and the blackbird had created; he saw a billowing promise for ursus.
the scarcety of prey was, by far, the least of why merrick blazed now with such pestilential heat; "over the mountains to our west, and then north. toward the sea. a small mountain. a cave of crystal inside."
he spoke as if wandering through memory, though presently his gaze sharpened. "your mother will find it hard to go." a note of true melancholy then, to think of leaving what they had known, where four children had been born to them, where —
but the raven queen knew the might of the bear. she had always understood on a feral plane that which drove merrick, and would know that he made this choice for the sake of ursus.
silently he bid @Astara still place her trust in him, and straightened. did aventus mean to leave now? "if this is our choice, we must leave the valley in silence." he did not speak of donovan, nor any enemies that might be massed against them.