Bearclaw Valley a seminar about whether or not deer feel pain or are just sad

Mandatory pack meeting, next round begins on March 29th or once everyone has posted! No post order, tags within the post are for reference for now. @Arielle @Val @Æsilfír @Stryx @Bernadette @Pandora

It was several days before Aventus had the mental fortitude to summon Ursus to Tumbleview. He had spent the interim locked somewhere in his own mind, spinning out of control and damning the bear and damning his father and damning Laurel and fantasizing about revenge.

Revenge that would never be his to reap, just as it was with Nyra. But he would not let Merrick go alone, oh no.

When he called them, he stood tall, but disheveled. What muted warmth existed in Aventus before was gone now, replaced by something hard and glacial. He called the pack with a voice that urged — nay, demanded, for he was their leader now — haste. When they had assembled before him, he looked at most of them without a trace of emotion. The exceptions were Arielle — the slightest flicker of warmth and of abject fear, as well — and Bernadette, whose likeness to a small bear had endeared her to Merrick, but whose resemblance now only disgusted and dismayed Aventus.

When they stood gathered, Aventus announced, in a voice as numb as he felt, @Merrick is dead.

The pain of saying it out loud was intense. He had never properly mourned Astara, marching to war before her body even cooled. He did not know how to mourn his father, but he knew he could not sit idle. The perpetrator was dead, but there were still traces of her. Here. Now.

It was @Laurel.

He let that hang in the air a moment before his voice turned to jagged stone. I will suffer her infection no longer. @Indra III. @Abel. He would have no more of it. Laurel was responsible for everything. It was time they ended her for good, every bit of her. You know what you must do. And if there was any doubt, he snuffed it out with his next wrenching breath: kill them.