Duskfire Glacier One different Scent

A strange nostalgia filled Malachi as they moved through the thinning trees. Though he'd walked this path a thousand times, it felt different moving along it now with one who likely found the unremarkable terrain simply another part of the territory. Though the leaf-bare trees held no indicator of past significance, to Malachi this part of the forest would always mean so much more.

"That's right," he said with a nod. Scarlett's confession to her ignorance of Njal troubled the boy, though nothing of her fault. The man had taken the past months hard, understandably so, but Malachi had hoped he would try to become a more active part of their pack as the weeks progressed. Yet with the stone man's resolution to leave come spring, was he really surprised Njal would not try to build any lasting bonds with the others who shared his home? "Njal is Maera's father," came his simple reply, and he left it at that.

Thankfully, Scarlett deflected the conversation to herself, though her words only troubled the boy in a different way. To shun a wolf was more than cruel, and an anger twitched within him at the revelation such had happened to her. He gave Scarlett a sidelong glance, but she gave no great display of emotion through her words or her visage. If the experience had scarred the girl, she did not show it, but if she was anything like him there remained the possibility she had merely suppressed the trauma she had endured. Though he knew little of such prejudice, he swore he would not let such behaviour pass as long as he remained leader here.

And she would not face such prejudice now. She seemed a gentle girl, undeserving of ill-treatment, and he let a warmth flood his face when he looked at her again. "That would be good for her," he replied with a faint grin. Though his siblings had been pups when he'd left the Vale, he found his skills with young ones lacking. Scarlett's eagerness would serve well to bring Maera fully into pack life, something he felt he was not capable of doing himself.

But his grin faltered at her final request, and Malachi responded with a short breath of silence. His eyes flicked across the ground, uncertain in their movements and searching for nothing but a way out. Yet the thought he wanted to escape from honouring the lives that had founded this place brought shame to his heart, and to lie or deflect would bring disgrace not only on him, but on all who had lived here, and on all who would live here for generations to come.

He flashed a brief glance her way before twitching his tail in a half-hearted beckon. "Come. I'll tell you," he said and pulled ahead to lead the way into the valley once dotted with violet lupines, now a barren waste stretching before the Glacier that had shone with such majesty their first night here.