Rising Sun Valley Ears ring and teeth click and

He woke up.

She was gone.

Panic. A flurry of snow and soggy fallen leaves, unearthed by a gentle melt a warmer wind had blown through.

He turned right. Left. A sharp breeze caught his cheeks and ruffled his fur like a wild man.

Ophelia was gone.

He did not call for her this time.

He had seen how the last time, he’d broken her to silence, stretching on, on, on.

She withered. She shrunk. Soon she would decay, if they did not find their brothers. If he did not find her.

He chased her scent, and she led him on a wild hunt. Coherent — yet wholly elsewhere.

An hour passed. Two. The sun turned through the sky. Three — and then, he saw her, gilded strands between the leaves.

Gilded strands and —

Mother Rain, he whispered, prayer quieted by a choke.

He hurried towards her, and though he wished to probe her with paws and toes and nose, he swooped in without kisses or overbearing touch, as Evander may have done. Just searching eyes, scouring the length of her, looking for where new wounds lay, but he could not decipher any new from the old.

Where are you hurt? he asked, a stressed and quiet question, what happened? Let me see you.