Bearclaw Valley i don't know how many more da-da-dums i can take

because idk how that will turn out, i will say this is set before the thread w/Xan, but after Reigi's promotion is common knowledge :) tags are just for reference, this is AW!

The news of the dumb girl's promotion hit Laurel hard for she didn't understand. Why give the girl who already had everything more, more, always more? Laurel greedily wanted more too, but unlike the dumb girl more didn't get blown in by the wind on a leaf for her to simply grab. All she had was Indra. It wasn't really anything new. She'd always only ever had Indra, but there was something about seeing other wolves that had all the things that ignited something in Laurel. A deep passion to have more, too. And then the frustration that she knew she would never have all of the things she wished for.

It didn't help that whenever she thought of Xan she just wished that he were different. That he loved her, instead. But she knew that none of that would happen and there was little use for wishful thinking. Suddenly Laurel longed back to the time when she had felt miserable because nobody gave a fuck about her... But at least she had been free to leave if she wanted. She longed for spring but she didn't long for what it implicated, what it brought.

It was clear by this point that she was pregnant; her stomach had swollen considerably, and though she wasn't as sick anymore she was hungry pretty much all the time. @Indra had been caring for Laurel and it felt to her that nobody else really cared enough to do a thing. @Blondine had mostly been caring for the other pregnant girl, as, or so it felt to Laurel, everyone had anyway. She'd avoided the borders mostly because the sight of the stupid girl made her sick to her stomach and reminded her of her predicament, filling her with anger and sadness and a sense of self-hatred and the desire to claw her own eyes out until she bled out and maybe then everyone would know they should've cared.

Of course, such thoughts were fleeting. Laurel sighed as she sifted through her options again as she made her way to the territory's center. She found a creek there and leaned down to lap up some of the cool water. Just one day at a time, she thought to herself — then maybe she could make it through this and see what was on the other side. She stared down into the water, a sore reminder that she was just an ugly side-dish and nothing more, and cursed herself for her own stupidity in her mind.