Northstar Vale You Know That I Can't Help Myself

back dated to around idk sep 11th @Collision still keeping things slightly vague sorry haha

He was gone, but that didn't stop the shadow from lurking around every corner. Her once homey den now felt confining like a cell that threatened to hold her soul until the very end, but the outside world was worse. What should have been freeing breaths of air became a void, one so empty and cold yet suffocating all the same.

She didn't know what to do now. Her parents, the only guidance she had truly known were both dead and gone with all the proof in the world scattered at her paws. Hotaru couldn't bear to stay. She fled the scene shortly after Takeshi's last breath, her body sore and in pain, but the voice in her head screamed louder than her muscles. For the past few days, she found a small hollow alongside a tree to hole up in and cry, not daring to go any further.

What of her siblings? Sumi? Haruki? Were they worried? Did they know by now what had happened? Or had they been left alone, waiting at home for her and their father to return? There were so many things she didn't understand still, but there was now an underlying feeling of dread and fear that gripped her soul.

He set out to find Hotaru. The other two were accounted for, but as it were, she had come up missing around the same time the young woman had. An unnerving feeling crawled in his stomach and he made haste in keeping his nose to the ground. She couldn't have gotten far. Of course, that seemed to be a ludicrous thought when it were considered how often the wolves of the empire were running after and recovering pups from who knows where. 

 After quite some time his efforts would bare fruit and he found the small girl. Desolate. His eyes looked over her frame and she reminded him much of Reiko in her final days. There was a similar brokenness to her. There was a similar feeling of heartbreak in his own chest.

 "Hotaru..." He whispered her name gently and sat down. Something had happened--things kept happening. He was supposed to protect them and as it turned out he was absolute shit at the job he had taken.

There it was, the whisper of her name on the wind. A sound she was growing used to hearing despite her isolation. For a moment she didn't move, though something about this whisper seemed...real. Cautiously she raised her head, purple gaze locking quickly to the face that peered back.

It wasn't him.

Of course, it would never be him again, but the thought still lingered until the hues of his pelt registered. Collision. The man who used to linger by her family's den. It made sense that he was the one to seek her out, in some way he might be their new caretaker, not that she viewed him as a father. She swallowed, her throat far too dry to speak gracefully should she try, luckily she didn't. She just stared with a look that could speak on its own.

Will you betray me too?