Dragoncrest Cliffs Strength.

His sister was gone. And Thibault decided to grow up.

He stood at dusk in front of his @Mireille's feet. He sought her out by nose, narrowing her direction down until he was there with heavy paws.

"Maman."

Serious.

"Let me help," he stated, stepping forward.

"Take me wid you," his brows lifted, explaining, step by step for her so that she could see he meant it.

"To search. Let me help. So we can find Miette. Astera. So we can find dem." No more did he feel the confusion and emptiness over it that he once had.

Reality had settled in, and as the days went by, the little boy in him fizzled. He loved his maman. He loved his family.

For this reason, he could not do nothing anymore.

"Please. Or let me go out alone."

"yes."
two weeks.
weeks.
mireille fought not to cry. "we go out toget'er, thibault. stay wid me."
astera and miette, and no god could help the wolf who had taken them or had harmed them.
between grief and terror, all the red mother felt was rage.

"Oui, maman. We find dem."

Together, they would search. Strange, Thibault noticed. Strange. Strange, how with every passing day, he found it harder to eat, harder to drink, and how when he did so, how it felt so incredibly slow. How time was passing. How things changed in its course. It confused him. He dreaded, however, their leave.

What he would not tell his maman was that he began to wonder, to think, to believe, that maybe they would not come back.

That they were gone.


Stiff legs, baby eyes in a big body, a mind full of emotion he did not know how to present, but he felt them so strongly. A prevention of a crack in his voice, his lips asking to deflate,
"'Cause we gotta."

---

"we must." they did not have a choice. the girls could not disappear from sapphique without a concerted effort to find them. "we will ask one ot'er to come. maleah, perhaps?" she asked of her young son, sparing no moment to coddle him. he had come to her for the purpose of asking this. mireille could answer thibault in the same direct way, involving him in any other decisions.

"Maleah, she is okay."

Though his eyes wandered to the ground, quiet for a moment, still as he conversed with his maman. Would that be enough? Would three bring them to their family? He knew not the size of the world.
Only the soft comfort of home and its quiet.

"Do you t'ink," he commented, a twitch of his tail before he touched upon his mothers eyes again, "we should organize search parties, maman? There are other packs, oui? Should we be askin' dem, maman? Perhaps they have seen Astera, Miette?"

"yes. all of us. we will go farther den we have been before, thibault."
and in this, she burned with a rage and a fear, a fear that a great beast with terrible jaws had somehow found their tiny daughters and devoured them as it had almost destroyed sapphique.
onward she sped.