Redtail Rise Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

With a greater confidence in the blooming spring than she had shown during her disastrous winter, Diane began branching out further and further on each trip she took beyond Porcupine Ridge. She told herself she would always return, and so far she'd had no inkling that she wouldn't, but the she-wolf was afraid of using such definitive phrasing. After all, the ocean would never destroy her life— she had loved it more than anything!— and yet it had.

So she moved forward, having the presence of mind not to think much about the things transpiring in her life. She was more content than she ever felt she deserved, being the sole survivor of her birthplace, and the native seawolf took her happiness and held on to it tightly. She wore it like a badge, her face as bright and interested as the sun looked, peeking from behind thin places in the grayed sky. While Diane didn't necessarily understand what was causing her anxious giddiness, she knew it was coming from somewhere inside her. Somewhere hidden and just as unexplored as her violent streak— perhaps even less so.

The young wolf, for the first time feeling the amorous motions of spring, bounced curiously along. She slowed only when the scenery abruptly changed from white and peeking green to charred black.

@Reek