Arrow Lake the sprinklers came on and doused me

How do you deal with loss when you've never lost anything before? Mesa had lost some things before; spars, games, his favorite stick. He could always go out and find a new one to replace the old, or challenge a sibling to a new game, goad someone in to a tussle if his energy needed to be burned off. Nothing compared to the loss of someone like Stigmata.

Stigmata. The thought of him summoned a mix of emotions to the back of his throat, sort of like indigestion. The reality of the situation had not settled in the boy's mind yet, but he knew that something had changed. Stag had become despondent - he refused to participate in any games, and kept to himself, and didn't even fight over the bones Mesa often touted. At first this was fine. At first, it made the boy feel like top dog. If only dad could see him now! So fierce that nobody would dare look his way!

That, of course, brought the feeling back. The twisting gut, the thick bile at the back of his throat that felt like it would burn right through him. The hollow feeling in his chest - a yearning. Mesa tried to make things right again: he acted as if nothing had changed, because for the boy nothing had. He convinced himself that their warlord of a father wasn't gone gone. Just around the bend - or over a ledge - he was around here somewhere. He had to be.

Mesa tried to make things right again. Make them normal. He hoarded toys, trailed his siblings. Tried to entice Stag in to a fight if it would help at all, but was only met with teeth; it didn't feel like a game. It felt like the last straw. Mesa had lost a father too, and didn't know how to deal with it yet - but he was also losing a brother, and... Was it something he could prevent? Something he could fix?

The boy trailed his brother after that. He wasn't a subtle boy, but managed well enough. Everyone being distracted by their sorrow as they mourned the loss of their leader - it was easy for Mesa to focus himself on to this new task. He bore witness to the changes in his brother; the lack of an appetite, the gradual lessening of energy, a look so lost that Mesa thought, more than once, that he didn't recognize his sibling at all.

But he couldn't always follow him. Sometimes, when Stag visited a particular part of the mountain, Mesa could go no further. He wanted to be present for his brother. They were a unit - the entire litter, formed together, born together, trained together with Stigmata as their commanding officer. Diaspora was calm but the members of his family were facing their own internalized battles, and Mesa... he wasn't trained for this. He was afraid to touch the ground where his father had landed.

So he hung back.

He waited. He gave his brother space, when maybe he should have done more.