Meadowlark Prairie i watch the colored animals across the floor

kill again he had.
merrick found himself rife with hunger, wounded, and emptier than before. dried tears clung to his cheeks; he stumbled in the direction of where he had last seen astara.
a trembling whimper of relief broke from his usually-assured self when he lay his one-eyed stare upon her slinking shadowed form; he quickened his pace, shuffling through the snow until he found her, found her —
— he filled his senses with astara, lapped at her cheeks, eyes tight-closed against all the world save for that which she woke in him, and all the while he held back the storm of his tears, the unnamed, enraging things churning and clashing within him until merrick was fair sick.