Stavanger Bay I cannot close my eyes.

Set for three or four days after the fire. @Rouge

The days charged on ahead, never pausing to allow the depths to pick up the pieces. Szymon ascended the throne while Doe still struggled to come to terms with her loses, even as she learned to bear this new mantle: Akhlut. It was a strange word, tasting like ancient seawater on her tongue - she was still learning to associate it with herself. Still learning to carry herself with the rank that it afforded. She was a queen, now.

But if becoming a queen was meant to be a victory, Doe found it to be a hollow one. Half her brood was dead or gone, her friends and family had been decimated, and worst of all, the peace and prosper that she'd enjoyed thus far had been ripped away. (There were days she still woke with a smile on her face, before the smell of smoke would tear that away, too.)

But the pain was only temporary. She kept telling herself that. The pain was temporary, but she could not simply wait it out. There was still work to be done, and the longer she tarried, the more troublesome it would become. So it was that, in the dark of the morning, Doe sought out the pack's scout.