Blacktail Deer Plateau green flash sunset

There was sorrow in her heart. As much as she cradled Deja before he departed—instilling his scent to memory, the perfect way in which only a mother could hold and console her young—she knew that when and if he came back… he would be so very different from now. And she would have missed it.

Still, the rust-tipped woman put on a brave face for her boy and the other children, and only when they departed did she turn to her husband, burying her face into the thick fur of his nape and trying to hide the sobs from her other children—mourning the absence of another child.