Herbalists' Cache Bullhead

Tag is only for reference. <3 Trail would have been lost around the ravine.

Darkness and snow had swallowed him.

Swordfish quaked as he slumped into an old den in the cache. His eyes were heavier than his body felt. Anger still raked at him from within. A lump had formed in the back of his throat that he could not swallow. Through the night and on through the morning, he had walked. He had crossed several rivers between the ravine where he had spoken with Quennell and where he slouched to rest.

Quennell…

The anger shook his body.

”Go ask yer pa… he be sayin’ he knows what I’m feelin’.”

But they weren’t the only ones who could leave, he’d realized. It wouldn’t be Swordfish who was left wondering what had gone wrong. If he convinced himself that the bear had killed them all, it would be easier. The dark eyes resurfaced in his mind. The young redtail felt overcome with fear, as though the bear had followed him to that very spot and waited to reach in with its razored paws.

The boy knew that @Meerkat would look for him. He knew that she would worry herself sick. He knew this and yet, it was easier to imagine her fraught with grief than it was to imagine her dead. She would have other sons. She would have a big family. Stingray would teach them how to be charming. They would be happy. This was easier on his mind and his heart.

Swordfish knew how to track and to conceal himself. Nobody would find him there. Not his momma, not his da, and not the evil bear. Doing this meant that they could live, in his mind. They could live and move away from the cliffs, from the carnage. They would be happy, he repeated to himself like a mantra.

When sleep came for him, it held him warmly in the abandoned den he had found.

When the redtail woke, he continued south.

It felt different, being the one leaving. It felt heartbreaking in a way he had never known before.