She was a royal queen with a royal bearing and a court of wolves at her beck and call, but even Saena wasn't blind or stupid. Her memories were still wholly gone and the wolves she surrounded herself with were no more familiar than any old lone wolf. There was no reason to believe that any of them were loyal to her, and she knew they muttered behind her back. She ought to have been worried about a takeover or an intervention, but she wasn't.
Instead, the queen carried on as if she'd always ruled the creek with an iron fist. The Saena of old would've balked at the very notion of demanding courtesies from her fellow pack mates, but the Saena who remembered nothing of her past and whose personality was addled and scrambled thought nothing of it. They were not as powerful as her. They could not defy her, and she would make every last one of them bow before her if she must.
But there was still a part of Saena that was intact—a love of hunting—and so when the dawn broke and she strode through her kingdom, having not even visited her alleged children or other followers since her return, the sight of a brilliant white moose striding through the trees brought a gasp to her lips. "My!" she exclaimed, standing back to watch the beast for a moment. It was resplendent. It was majestic. It was everything Saena loved in nature, or thought she did post-amnesia.
Its coat was fit for a queen, and she being the strongest in all the land, she would have it. So she pursued it, across fallen logs and over streams. She followed it through oak and aspen, over springy moss and across pebbly banks. She followed it through the rapids of the creek, and didn't stop to wonder at how she hadn't died crossing. She followed it beyond the trees, through the jade basin at the bottom of the hill, across an isle between two rivers, and through another wood of loftier species. She followed it for three days and three nights, never ceasing, never feeling the hunger that gnawed at her breast, and all the while it did not acknowledge her with even a turn of its great head.
Even when it disappeared like all her hallucinations inevitably did, Saena thought she followed it still, until she was long gone from the Teekon Wilds with little hope of finding her way back.
Instead, the queen carried on as if she'd always ruled the creek with an iron fist. The Saena of old would've balked at the very notion of demanding courtesies from her fellow pack mates, but the Saena who remembered nothing of her past and whose personality was addled and scrambled thought nothing of it. They were not as powerful as her. They could not defy her, and she would make every last one of them bow before her if she must.
But there was still a part of Saena that was intact—a love of hunting—and so when the dawn broke and she strode through her kingdom, having not even visited her alleged children or other followers since her return, the sight of a brilliant white moose striding through the trees brought a gasp to her lips. "My!" she exclaimed, standing back to watch the beast for a moment. It was resplendent. It was majestic. It was everything Saena loved in nature, or thought she did post-amnesia.
Its coat was fit for a queen, and she being the strongest in all the land, she would have it. So she pursued it, across fallen logs and over streams. She followed it through oak and aspen, over springy moss and across pebbly banks. She followed it through the rapids of the creek, and didn't stop to wonder at how she hadn't died crossing. She followed it beyond the trees, through the jade basin at the bottom of the hill, across an isle between two rivers, and through another wood of loftier species. She followed it for three days and three nights, never ceasing, never feeling the hunger that gnawed at her breast, and all the while it did not acknowledge her with even a turn of its great head.
Even when it disappeared like all her hallucinations inevitably did, Saena thought she followed it still, until she was long gone from the Teekon Wilds with little hope of finding her way back.
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