Arrow Lake one breath, it'll just break

The calm waters lapped at her tiny paws—so small, in comparison to the company she kept, both now and in life. Inconsequential, even.

His words were as liquid and waning as the water. She felt a small smile pull at the corner of her lips, but it was not one of amusement—if anything, a certain sorrow had begun to blanket her once more. “You have said many things, Imperator,” she offered, quiet in her agreement to that—“And so if I go by proof and action, if I go by your belief to serve only what you can see—then all I can see that Mereo is allied with Akashingo. And if Arsenio had believed it appropriate to share with you what I know, he would have done so already.”

She mused on that for a moment, and turned from him, a slender shoulder given as she padded back to the dry shores—the stretch of arrow lake no longer becoming with it’s offer of fortitude and silence. Now, it seemed a long walk home, with far too much her mind and heart wished to bear.

“What you refuse to say speaks far more loudly.”

He wished to try to place death of her pack upon her—and she would take those words, and she would hold them to her for now. And with a flick of her tail, the healer would begin to make her way back home—resilience only found in a stolen moment of realization that her trust in others and herself was almost entirely shattered now.