Big Salmon Lake Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

Set after this but before this. Making an assumption that they agreed to meet up so that finding the body makes more sense. Vague about the outcome of this.

From the pine forest, Dragomir parted ways with the wolves from Moonspear, and possibly Isilmë as well if she had other business to attend to. @Vercingetorix intended to meet up with them at the lake in the foothills, so that was where Dragomir headed. The going was slow, but he was pleased to find that moving at a normal clip was getting easier and easier. He limped conspicuously, which was a weakness he didn't want on display for the world to see, but it was unavoidable for now.

The last thing he expected to see in the shallows was a body. It was always surreal to come across a fallen wolf. Dragomir approached with mild curiosity at first; he'd never seen a body before, and his mood was in such a low place that becoming distracted was easy. Pitching his ears forward, the juvenile limped into the water and waded out to the waterlogged body. Poor sod. He wondered what had caused his demise.

The warm scent of his father came first, bathing Dragomir's insides with an icy fear that was confirmed when he got close enough to see the familiar scar stretched across the man's neck. That fear solidified inside of Dragomir, encasing every organ in solid ice. He was petrified, mortified eyes wide on the lifeless form of his father, face expressionless. There was so much blood in the water. It was beautiful and sick and horrifying. Somewhere inside him, something fundamental broke in half.

He did not react with the same hot, anguished show of emotions he had upon learning Aurëwen had left them. The grief that punched through him now was far, far stronger than that, because this was permanent. There was the chance his mother would return one day, as unwelcome as she might be, but his father could never come back from this. What happened instead was a sudden seizing of every emotion in his body, leaving him completely numb; he couldn't even seem to cry, even though this hurt as much as learning his mother had chosen to abandon them. Even as the depths of his depression grew tenfold.

He did whirl away several feet before vomiting bile into the water, and there he crouched, shaking like a leaf, repeating no no no no no no no no over and over inside his head. Not dead, he's not dead, he can't be dead, this is someone else, it's someone else, it's not him, he fervently told himself as he retched, and so desperate was that hope that in no time at all, he would force himself to believe it. The alternative was too unfathomable and his shattered heart could not handle accepting his father's demise. It couldn't happen.

Because this was his fault, too, and he knew it. If only he had gone with Vercingetorix, his father wouldn't be dead. His fault. His fault his fault hisfault. It was easier, as fragile as he was, for Dragomir to tell himself this wasn't Verx.

Invited: @Cadaver @Isilmë

"I hate you." 
she's trembling, gutted and hollow and burning. how she got here, a few meters from her brother, the smell of his bile entwined with the putrid scent of decay and rot, she does not know. clotted blood is stuck to her coat, the drone of flies deafening. she lurches forward, slogging towards the body of her father. she falls half against him, recovers, barely, and tries to pull him toward her by the scruff. get up.

"youpromisedyoupromisedyousaid." the voice is high and brittle and can't be hers. she tugs, and feels the corpse that was once her father give. she fastens her jaws around his scruff, and with all the strength afforded to her pulls him violently skyward, as if all it takes for this to go away if for her to pull him back onto his paws. 

his body hits the water and she's left with fur and stale blood in her maw, the loose skin around her father's nape tearing at her frantic efforts. someone's screaming, but it isn't her; it's inside her head and it won't stop. backpedalling, spitting out the fur in her mouth, she feels something, finally, give way. "it's not fair! you promised, you - I hate you!" she's raving, words broken and shrill, and then she collides with Dragomir and vomits, hacking, into the brackish water.

I hate you, said Isilmë's voice behind him, and Dragomir's ears slammed back against his skull. No, no, no no no no, he wanted to plead, because at first he thought she was talking to him. It made sense. If he hadn't gone with Sanguinus, he wouldn't have been tortured and thrown off the mountain. His legs wouldn't have broken. His family wouldn't have gone to Kaistleoki. His mother wouldn't have grown restless enough to leave on a scouting trip for the sake of finding allies for the pack. She wouldn't have been struck by lightning and made the inconceivable decision to never come home. Vercingetorix wouldn't have felt the need to find her for the sake of his kids. He wouldn't be here. He would be alive.

His family would still be whole, if not for Dragomir.

So it made sense for Isilmë to hate him, but that didn't make it an easy pill to swallow. She was all he had left and he couldn't handle the slice of her knife against his broken heart. He couldn't turn to face her until the slosh of water drew his focus sharply upward, and his trembling crouch became a defensive one. Was she going to attack him? No, no, she was going over to Vercingetorix, throwing herself against his body, grabbing his nape, ripping his nape off what the fu—

Dragomir couldn't bear it. He reeled back and forced his hindquarters to the earth in a feeble effort to ground himself as bile spewed from his muzzle once more. That was soon joined by Isilmë's when she careened into him. God, what a fucking mess they were, but who could blame them? They went from having two parents—one missing, but presumably still thinking of them, and one present—to zero in one fell swoop.

He was shivering and he couldn't stop. He needed to get out of the water, but he couldn't move. Teeth chattering and mind whirling, Dragomir shoved his snout into his sister's shoulder and weakly cried, Isiwhatdowedonow? He could not come to terms with Vercingetorix's death, but bizarrely, that wasn't at the forefront of his mind despite his shock. Instead, he was thinking about how the hell they were going to prove their worth to Moonspear without their dad.

Both of them should be skilled young wolves by now, but Dragomir's hunting practice ground to a halt the day he was thrown from that cliff, and he didn't know whether Isilmë's fighting skills alone could earn their keep until he was strong enough to resume his hunting. He hoped it was, but black clouds descended on him and told him that it was impossible for them to do enough without Verx.

Hydra would throw them out. He just knew it. Yet they had nowhere else to go. Kaistleoki was too far and too close to Verx's nemesis to be safe for them now. Aurëwen was not an option, not after this. So he would ultimately return to the mountain once he came to grips with what had happened here, even if it meant facing a row of teeth. What was the pain of teeth compared to the shattering of your heart or the snapping of your sanity?