Dragoncrest Cliffs manmi

Wet heat blooms across the top of her head. Chacal, too, had lost her mothers, her brother; Chacal, too, knew this despair.
Was it for the better, that she had not been there to witness it? To see the scarlet entrails of her brother, the rivulet of foam from her mother's jaws? To watch the other's light fade until her own daughter was nothing but a fizzling memory?
Tell me dey did not suffer, Coraline rasps; dat it was not painful. the churn of her stomach, the bitterness that swallowed her heart knew the truth, and yet she chooses not to accept it as her nails find the skin beneath Chacal's fur and gently press against it, as if Chacal, too, would be swept away.