Moonspear know that the shine inside will always keep you strong

If not even Alaric could cure her, the condition must be a powerful one indeed. The things that only time could fix were often the most difficult to weather — and it sounded as though there were layers to this one that went deeper than the sickness in her body.

Katmai listened, and felt his heart well up with a grief that was not his own. His expression was one of shock and devastation, and he quickly turned it away from her to look at the wounds in the mountain again, not wanting to upset her. It was just —

"That sounds very scary," he told her, his voice just a little husky. Scary was right, but it was not the word that he meant. What he meant was that there was almost no scent trace left of Moonspear, and to have the grief of losing her pack and her memories set alongside the obvious decay of her village sounded heartbreaking beyond measure.

He thought that Treepie must be much stronger than him. He wanted to cry for her, but kindly refrained.

"I'm sorry, Treepie," he said, quite sincerely. It did not occur to him to doubt any of her story, nor question the chances of such a thing. "It must be difficult to see your home like this — even if it had already fallen, the last your remember."

He wondered, too, about her time spent away.

"I was lost in the wilderness for many, many weeks when I was — when I was very young," he told her, though he was not sure what value this knowledge might hold for her. "When I came home, most everything was different. I remember my time away... But it was still very hard for me to understand."

It hadn't gotten much easier. Katmai had left his family, as a result.

"Perhaps it would be good for you to be among other moon wolves," he suggested, trying not to sound as worried as he was. "Faces you don't see every day. Something that can be new and different, but familiar, too. Arrluk and Ajei have a pair of daughters, now. Do you know them?"

Katmai didn't, but he assumed that all moon wolves must know each other and be related in some way, shape, or form.