Otter Creek a raft of otters

Stark’s stride faltered, just for a moment, at Needle’s question. His golden eye narrowed slightly as his mind turned over the words, picking at them like loose threads in a tapestry. The memories she invoked were blurred, fragmented, as if his mind had locked away the answers she sought behind a door he couldn’t open.

“I did not leave my home,” he said at last, his tone sharp, as though the very idea offended him. “I was… displaced.” The word fell from his tongue awkwardly, foreign to him. Stark was a wolf of control, of precision. He did not simply leave. Yet the exact details, the how and the why, slipped from his grasp like sand through his claws.

His pace slowed further, and for once, his gaze didn’t meet hers. It lingered instead on the ground ahead, searching for something he could not name. “I remember Evenspire,” he continued after a long silence. “My family. My sister. I remember clawing for every inch of respect while she was given it freely. And yet…” His voice trailed off, a flicker of frustration passing across his features.

“I don’t recall why I’m here. Why I was removed. Or if it was by my own choice.” His tail flicked sharply, betraying the simmering anger at his own limitations. “As for ruling—” He turned his eye to her then, the edge returning to his voice. “That was always my right. My sister may have held the throne, but Evenspire needed me just as much as her, if not more. She was strength, yes, but I was the blade. A throne cannot stand on wisdom alone.”