Sun Mote Copse when you're off the phone, you wanna get a pizza.

this takes place somewhere between Fin finding Tegan at the borders and Finwood deciding to migrate to SMC, whenever that might be :D

Finley knew the way now. Truth be told, she would've preferred it if she'd been uncertain. Maybe even if she'd gotten lost in the wilderness for a few hours - anything to further stall the few moments of peace she knew her goddaughter would be enjoying before her aunt arrived and destroyed it all forever. Fin knew all too well what was in store for Wildfire once she learned of what had happened to Bat. She too had lost a child. She knew how drastically life changed with that loss. She didn't want to change Wildfire's world, not when she was on track again after turning her own life upside down. It was cruel. But it was also necessary. Not knowing sometimes was worse.

Fin paused once the scent of the pack's markings notified her that she had arrived. She loitered for a few minutes on the borders, pulling together her own composure. She hadn't known Bat well, but she had liked the girl. Her loss was only painful for Fin, but it was devastating for her son and would be for her might-as-well-be-daughter. This was going to be hard, but it would not be her time to grieve. She needed to be calm, sympathetic, but most of all just there. She couldn't be there if she was lost in her own remorse - not just for Bat, but for the last time she had delivered news like this to Wildfire. That time it had been devastating for her as well.

"Pull it together, Frog..." Fin murmured to herself, squeezing her eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again and tilting her head back to summon @Wildfire to her. There was never going to be a good time for something like this.

The call roused Wildfire from a deep sleep. Shaking off the remnants of a good dream, she rose and stretched, shaking a dusting of snow from her red pelt as a yawn forced her jaws apart. When she felt suitably awake and limbered, she hastened to respond to the summons. Her heart thumped hopefully, wondering if Elwood was with Finley and if they'd come here to stay, especially now that Colt and Eljay were here.

But she found her godmother alone. There was a look on her face that made Wildfire slow her pace considerably. Something was wrong. Oh no! her mind screamed. Is it Uncle Elwood? With a burst of speed, she closed the distance, nudging her aunt's cheek as she breathed, "What's happened, Aunt Flea?"

tossing her in here <3 feel free to skip, she's just gonna observe

Kiwi heard the call too and, as a prospective member of semi-leadership, she came to it.  When she arrived, she saw that her mom had already come, so she hung back.  Just in case she was needed, but not wanting to intrude.

It didn't take Wildfire nearly long enough to answer the call. Fin took in a deep breath the moment she heard approaching footsteps. She couldn't stop her mind from playing back the memory of when she'd broken the news of Peregrine's and Fox's death to her goddaughter. The setting was different, but it felt so similar. She knew what it felt like to break her little girl's heart, and here she was again, about to smash it into smithereens. This was going to be so much worse.

When Fin looked up, she saw Wildfire coming towards her with a tiny little doppleganger peeking out from the trees behind her. The sight was so adorable, she felt her heart breaking even more. Ugh, this sucked. It sucked it sucked it sucked it sucked it sucked. But when Wildfire asked - no getting anything past her, was there... - Fin had no alternative but to just tear the band-aid right off.

"It's..." she said, her voice soft and tremulous. It only then occurred to her that she hadn't at all actually prepared for how to say this, so she hesitated momentarily, scrambling for words while trying simultaneously to keep herself from unraveling. "Tegan and Bat were exploring up near Two Rivers Isle. They were on the ice and it broke. Bat fell through and Tegan..." Fin paused, shutting her eyes as the end of the sentence dropped out of her reach. There were tears pooled there when she opened them again to look at her goddaughter's face, "She's gone, sweetheart."

She heard someone approaching from behind and turned, just for a second, to acknowledge Kiwi lurking in the background. Wildfire then turned toward Finley, bracing herself for bad news about Elwood. But it turned out there was nothing wrong with her uncle. It was Bat. She and Tegan had been exploring, as the two of them were wont to do, and Bat had fallen through some thin ice.

Her godmother took care not to beat around the bush. "She's gone, sweetheart," Finley reported, tears in her eyes. Wildfire could only blink, lips parting as she felt her insides twist. "What?" she whispered dumbly, trying to make sense of what this meant. "Gone?" she repeated. "Gone, like..." She was shaking, her breath catching because her throat felt like it was closing. "Gone like d—?" The world died in Wildfire's mouth.

She might have been hanging back, but her ears were keen as any wolf's. From that distance, she could hear what Finley said.  

Gone.  Just like last time, only this time, for good.  It felt like the ground dropped out from beneath Kiwi's feet, and the cacophony of emotions that threatened to overwhelm kept her firmly rooted for a minute, frozen.  

Shock was first.  Then anger.  A hell of a lot of anger, more than she thought she'd ever felt before, and she didn't even know who at.  Herself maybe, because now Bat was apparently gone and Kiwi hadn't been there.  Maybe at Bat, because now that she was gone, Kiwi was no longer allowed to be angry at her.  Once again, Bat had torn a hole in the middle of them, just when they'd been trying to rebuild.  It didn't matter that it wasn't her fault.  Kiwi only had the ability to be mad right now, because if she wasn't mad...

She knew her mom probably needed her right now, but she couldn't be here.  So she vanished into the trees, running as fast as she could away from the two adults and their shared sorrow.

Fin watched her niece begin to digest the news, holding her breath. She heard the last word in the sentence before Wildfire came to it, and she shook her head. Maybe it was more cruel than kind to offer hope when it was so slim, but the Blackthorn refused to believe that Bat was dead. Just as she had never believed Lucy was dead. Just as she would never believe that Lucca, Fiadh or Lagan were anything but safe and happy somewhere in whatever corners of the world they had gone off to. She just wouldn't. She wouldn't.

"No, we don't know that," Fin said, stepping forward to close the distance between herself and Wildfire. She froze before she got there, seeing her niece's little doppleganger disappear with a flash and another knife to Fin's heart. Helpless, she looked at Wildfire again. "He looked for her, but he couldn't find her. So she might not..." Fin fell quiet for a beat and shook her head. "Honey, I am so sorry," she offered as a tear slid down her cheek.

Finley's "no" caught Wildfire by surprise. She stared at her godmother as she explained how Tegan hadn't been able to find her, dead or alive. Her stricken gaze tracked the tear that slid from Finley's eye down her silvered cheek. She should've found hope in this statement, yet her own face crumpled as it felt like a cold stone settled in the pit of her belly. If Tegan hadn't found her, where else could she be but at the bottom of the icy river, her gravestone made of ice?

"I just saw her," she whispered, lips suddenly dry. "Things were slowly getting better between us. I..." Her voice failed her again as her mind tried to process the gravity of this loss. Wildfire kept waiting for an all-encompassing sadness to wash over her, drowning her right along with her doomed daughter, but the seconds ticked by and she only felt strangely numb. Not even a tear budded in her chestnut eyes, despite her usual penchant for crying.

Belatedly, she looked behind her. Kiwi was no longer there. She should go after her. But Wildfire felt rooted to the spot, frozen on the outside as well as the inside. Slowly, she faced her godmother again. "Do you need anything to eat? Somewhere to rest?" she offered a little mechanically, really not sure what to do with herself otherwise.

Fin waited for the devastation to contort Wildfire's face, but it didn't come. Not exactly. There was shock, and there was pain there for sure, but not the break. For a moment, she found herself wondering what she had looked like when she'd been told Lucy had been kidnapped. Had she fallen to pieces immediately? Had she cried? Had she raged? She honestly couldn't remember. It was just a dark space in her memory that she did not look at. Would this moment be the same for Wildfire?

She had no words of comfort for her niece as she spoke of the relationship she'd been repairing with her daughter. There was nothing to say. She took a step closer, planning to reach for Wildfire and open herself for an embrace if her goddaughter wished it. But Wildfire seemed momentarily frozen, and when she came to, she was not in grieving mother mode, but hostess mode.

Finley considered this for a moment before deciding on an answer. "I'm not hungry, but I'll stay with you tonight, if that's okay?" she said slowly, watching Wildfire. The news would catch up to her eventually and Fin would be damned if she let it come crashing down on her when she was all alone.

Were overnight guests allowed? Wildfire felt an insane urge to laugh at the question. As Sovereign, she could theoretically do whatever she wanted, though she knew she was setting all sorts of precedents for the other Firebirds, especially at the beginning. Why she should feel concerned about something like that right now, she didn't have a clue. Fortunately, she suppressed the altogether inappropriate impulse to chuckle and motioned for Finley to follow her a little deeper into the copse.

She stopped beside a large boulder, probably a part of the mountain that had broken off hundreds if not thousands of years before and now lay partially embedded in the copse's cold earth. It leaned a little, creating a somewhat cozy, sheltered space on its southern side. If they bedded down here and faced the east, they would be woken by the morning sun.

"I'll get something to eat," Wildfire said, already forgetting that Finley had said she wasn't hungry. Wildfire disappeared and returned within moments, holding a dead rabbit in her jaws. She set it carefully in the boulder's shadow. She gestured for her godmother to make herself comfortable, then slipped down beside her. She pressed close, thinking to keep Finley warm and comfortable as well as fed.

For a long while, Wildfire didn't say or do much of anything. She stared off into space, then blinked over at her aunt. "I should go find Kiwi..." she said. And, right then, as she thought of breaking the news to Kiwi—although doubtless she'd overheard...—Wildfire broke. She curled into a ball (around the ragged hole ripped through her middle), face buried in her Aunt Flea's shoulder as she bawled her heart out.