Duskfire Glacier Baby love me, apocalyptic

Lane was not a great reader of faces, and when the ex-witch turned away in sadness, she read it as guilt. 

"It really sucks, and it's not your fault or anything. My last pack, Firefly Glen, dissolved away just like that. Well, instead of a fire it was a fallen star..." Lane shrugged, failing to see how a wildfire and a meteor strike were all that different. 

Both Rowan and Zephyr disappearing before the natural disaster was weird though. Despite not really believing in all that nonsense, even Lane could tell that those woods had some bad juju. This news just reinforced her suspicions.

"If you never went back, how d'you know that your friend is really...?" Really dead is what she meant, though she didn't finish the sentence aloud. It was weird that the ex-witch already spoke of her friend in the past-tense, especially without ever having returned to confirm her suspicions. 

"Maybe we could go back sometime and look around, when your paws are healed?" Lane suggested, sensing an opportunity for a scouting mission. "Didja need help with that, by the way? Your paws, I mean?" The Duskfire caregivers had been pretty busy with all the children; Lane didn't want to let a medical need fall through the cracks, so to speak.