Ocean's Breath Plateau Out on the mira

Part of him was much aggrieved to hear that she had given up on him, but he knew in his heart that he couldn't blame her. Sometimes, hope was more painful to live with than desolation. Hope took more energy and strength than he'd had in him these past few months. Mostly, it'd been desperation driving his paws ever onward.

"We are not meant to shoulder these things alone," he said after a long moment of quiet, when his throat had loosened enough to speak once more. "But you did it anyway. You are here, safe. You've kept our children safe. The rest — that can be mended."

He wondered, though. If she had given up on him, did that mean there was someone else? This was another idea that'd plagued him during their dogged fight to make it home. Some days, he had hoped she would find succor with Chakliux. Others, he was jealous over the previous day's hopes. On his worst nights, he worried he would return to find the families split, and Simbelmyne living happily with a stranger his children called father — or worse, a stranger who would not allow them to address him as such.

But her coat smelled of solitude. Loneliness. Guiltily, he found himself grateful.

"There were nights I wanted to leave Valiant behind," he confessed, though he was not sure if she would find solidarity or shame in such a thing. He carried on anyway: "Some nights, I waited for him to ask. Go on without me. We have said these things to each other before. But he knew — we both knew — he would not make it back without me. And he has a family to get back to, too."

Still, Dutch had had to bite his tongue over and over again to keep from suggesting they travel ahead.

"But I worried," he said, his voice wooden. "For Katmai. For myself. In those mountains... I was sure each time we laid down to rest, we would not get back up again." A shiver rippled down his spine as he recalled the searing pain of the cold. "Of course I am glad we stayed together, but..." His ears flattened, and he seemed to come back to himself. "You were almost right to have given up. If things had been just a little different, we might not have made it back at all. Or I would have come back having done something so monstrous as turning my back on a brother."