Raven's Watch While you were out building other worlds, where was I?

And so the day came that Wylla collected @Stag and together they traveled to the Watch's keep.

Ever since abandoning the cedar scrap by the lake, Wylla noticed that her mind had become a blissfully blank and unfeeling place. She found herself locked within it more often than was healthy, bathed in a numbness that reached all the way down into her very soul. A wolf could probably bite her ear clean off and she wouldn't bat an eye, so complete was her self-destruction. She would merely conclude that she deserved it with no justification for why she felt that way. She wasn't sure she would ever feel anything ever again.

No doubt Stag noticed it. She did her best to answer anything he said in her usual manner and held herself as normally as she could to ease any worry, but there was a definite lack of Wylla™ in everything she said and did. She was merely going through the motions of living a life she didn't particularly want anymore. She yearned to walk until she found the edge of the earth and let it swallow her whole, but she kept reminding herself that Stag deserved better than another wolf leaving him behind, and she had told @Stjornuati she would return.

They paused before the ridge, not daring to begin climbing the stones around it. The scent of wolves was thick enough to deter that. Wylla pulled in a slow breath, as if steadying nerves she couldn't feel, and howled a short and quiet note for the pale northerner.

Stag was relieved when they came upon the rocky outcropping boasting the first of a pack's scent along its borders. The reason for his relief came in part for Wylla's behavior -- he had noticed she was despondent, different even -- at first he had naively wondered if it was a lack of food or resources or even purpose... The longer they walked, the more he realized that perhaps the loss of Sagtannet had impacted her profoundly.

He couldn't fault her for it. In one swing of unfavorable events, she had lost a paramor, two children, and a home. All Stag had lost was a home and friends. He tried his best to keep chipper in the face of Wylla's despondence, but he was not of sunny disposition himself.

Once they stopped, Stag peered at Wylla while she howled. He would not say anything today in front of these strangers, but later when they were alone he would likely carefully poke about, and see what he could do to make Wylla Wylla again.