Duskfire Glacier Was it a fever dream?

Kept lotta things vaguey vague until his returning thread is complete, but aw still! Edit: Thread will be archived in 3 days

 

He knew better than to peer into his family's home but the quickly expiring shred of hope dragged him back by his ear. The gut punch Rye endured seeing his den again was expected but what wasn't was the desire to roll on the furs blanketing their floor, a fragmented echo of their scents remained and the man wanted nothing more than to inhale their fragrances once again. To stain his lungs with what remained of his family, drag his breaths in extra slow, savor each intricacy. He rolled into their bed, letting the phantom touches of his wife ebb and flow over him like the oceans currents on a stormy night. The man did not trifle with hiding what emotions he felt, they ebbed and flowed just as the phantoms of his wife did. He curled into the furs, his tail tucking between his back legs while his head tried its best to bury itself in the bedding but was left severely wanting. Would it ever be enough? Would the already faded smells of his past sate the yearnings? Sate the ache in his chest, the weight?
As he laid there Rye began to lose their scent, panic set in as he scrambled to find it again, only in his rush did Rye muck up the den. Furs and trinkets for his son thrown about the home. Blood from his cracked paws seeped into the furs while in his haste and his own acrid scent began replacing everything. It was gone, the fragments were all but forgotten. Rye stopped in his tracks, slowing his approach in hopes of finding one last hair but there was no more. For a while the man stood there in stricken silence, a sickeningly awful blotch building in the backdrop of himself. It bubbled, boiled, and sizzled to the top with a harrowing, sickly pale scream. He screamed and cursed the sky's for what they robbed from him, cursed himself for not doing his due diligence. To hell with whoever heard his screams, let it be known he would curse the sky, the spirits of Imaqs world, for taking away everything near and dear to him.