Dragoncrest Cliffs We're more ghosts than people.

Whenever the edges of an old wound started to knit together, there was always something to roughly tear them apart. In the six months of Dacio's young life, fate saw fit to test him by picking away at his relatives - one by one. First, his elder sister had vanished for a time, only to return and announce her departure. Second, a litter-mate chose to disperse despite seeing how the former's decision affected their family and unlike Dalia, Sequoia had not even cared to bid them a meaningful farewell. Crushed that he hadn't been enough to keep his siblings rooted, he struggled through varying mixed emotions in a vicious cycle as he tried to piece the parts of his splintered life back together.

More recently, his mother's death had been devastating, and felt impossible to process - especially in the wake of battle with the pack's foes in Rusalka.

For days, he worried that she'd turned to the life of natrona following the loss of another of her offspring, and he'd begun to resent her for the assumption. Dacio initially wanted to believe it, because while she may have left him willingly, she might've been happy somewhere else - even if he could not be. He tried to hate her, tried to tell himself that she left him when he needed her most, because he was rapidly finding anger and frustration much easier to cope with than the crush that always accompanied sadness. But he could not, and wondered if there was any bone is his body capable of hating anything. While he'd been broken by the loss of Portia, something inside him hoped it would only be a temporary thing while she tended to her own grief in privacy, that she would come back to them and they could be whole again.

But it was not meant to be. And the boy who tried so hard to despise his mother, in turn found that he could hate himself far more.

He isolated himself from his father and remaining sister, choosing instead to mostly linger of the outskirts of Drageda's claim while he nursed his wounds - both emotional and physical. If anyone searched for him or even crossed his path by chance, the silver Gona would curl his lip and turn away. Dacio didn't want the pity of his comrades but, more importantly, he didn't deserve a single ounce of it.

To believe his mother was capable of abandoning him had been foolish and selfish, for Portia had been the purest thing he'd ever known. She'd tought him to be gentle, to be kind, that between all the pain and suffering in the world, there could be beauty. Dacio looked out over the late Fisa's beloved garden, at the plants that had withered and died from the frost, at the earth  dusted by fresh snowfall, and felt the familiar sting of regret. Pressing his ears back, he slipped carefully into the den where she'd stored her herbs for the cold season and closed his eyes to drink deep the scents that so often clung to her fur. He remembered the comfort it brought him as a child, and found himself longing for those simpler times. He paired the sweetness of it with the loveliness of her smile, the same one that had barely reached her eyes in recent weeks, but in the next breath recalled his last patrol with Opalia: "the last spot I know about Seq's scent being here is just up ahead," she'd told him.

"It's gonna be gone soon."

And suddenly, the aroma of dried flowers replaced the warmth in his chest with stone, and he gritted his teeth as he made a swift exit. Everything that had been wonderfully Portia would soon be gone, faded to nothing but heartbreak. Dacio quickened his stride to leave the place his dam had spent much of her time, knowing that he wanted to remember her happiness there and not stricken by the despair that had been so cruelly dropped on her already bowed shoulders.

The storm had passed, but the snow still fell that night. It floated all around him, resting atop his peppered dorsal and the chill pricking his eyes, but he did not shake his pelt free of its weight. Instead he powered on through the darkness toward the very cliffs that sent his mother to her untimely end. Dacio wandered the slick stone with a shudder against the biting cold, a charcoal ear trained on the crash of waves on the rock below, though he dared not venture too close to the edge. He simply wished to reach the highest point with the best view, to look out over something endless, and remind himself of the unfairness of it all.

Dalia had brought great sorrow onto their family, but it was Sequoia who'd forced their greatest loss. A low rumble swelled in the young Drakru's breast as he tilted his chin a little higher, exhaling heavily with the belief that if his litter-mate had only stayed, their mother would still be alive. Dacio's whiskers twitched as he growled to himself though the more he dwelled on it, the more he seethed. Sequoia had encouraged him to lash out at something once, as a way to channel and release the hurt, and he came to understand the meaning behind her suggestion.

Because while he may never truly heal from this, it would make him stronger - just as Heda said. He would train with everything he had, and he was determined to become something formidable.

He canted his muzzle skyward and released a mournful howl, a long and sorrowful sound that travelled for miles all around him. It was a goodbye to the wolfess who'd bore him from her own womb, an apology for failing her, and a promise to never do so again. Dacio would pull himself together, rise and rise again, and he would one day seek to look Sequoia in the eye to be sure that she'd rue the day she broke their mother's heart.

She would die for this, and he would make sure of it.