Noctisardor Bypass valar morghulis

ribcage expanded with horrid breath. druid's face twisted, smoothed, fragmented. she was mahler. she was sequoia. she was worripa. she was witch. she was the unknown smudge of paleness over a newborn's cradle, the timbre of a voice which was shocking and muted to recall even now.
ribcage swelling; and it was rage, it was long years of it and the endless, continual losses.
oh, somewhere they had to be placed. somewhere they had to go. 
a step, tempered; another would have flung her upon druid and cut her sister to unseeing ribbons in this moment of all moments, when she stood in the horror of losing another son —
— anselm's son.
the final den mother made the choice to maim four stricken children for the sake of one. pupil pinpoint, she backed from druid, grabbed ezra, and dragged him off at an adrenaline-fueled, breakneck speed which cut her face upon pine boughs and blurred her with tears.
she could not see druid die. she could not watch the pups outlive the short life of their mother. too much she loved them for that, and too weighty was her selfishness in taking what was left of herself and of anselm from the one place to which she should have never returned.
fatherwound;
motherwound;
sisterwound;
rent in the souls of four children as she clutched ezra in unyielding jaws which scarcely managed to lift his growing body, shoulders cramping, neck aching, running and running and running from rivenwood.

she will be leaving rvw as of this post with no intention to come back