Wapun Meadow let these shadows prove the sunshine

Arlette didn't know Scarlett, this much was clear, and Malachi felt an anxious foreboding crawl through his spine as she continued on. Her questions... her phrasing... everything in the past, and his face fell deeper into a frown. His eyes darkened.

Scarlett was ... only, Scarlett was what? He couldn't figure out what to do with that. Malachi hoped Arlette meant the winter queen simply wasn't here anymore, wasn't living in the area, still alive, just... not around, but he felt the bristling sense that he knew all too well what this young one meant.

He decided just to focus on answering her questions first. "Red eyes, white fur. She looked just like you, actually," he said through the tightness of his frown, "She was kind. Selfless." Sometimes to a fault - and is this what got her killed? No - no, she could still be alive; he was jumping to conclusions. He sought his focus again, "She loved pups. The ones everyone abandoned, that no one else really seemed to want... she was always bringing them home..." his voice was troubled, distant, wholly stolen by the memory of the friend he had lost, and teetering on the edge of the question he needed to know, but didn't quite have the courage to ask.

He had lost her once, but had the world now lost her altogether?