Seaside Moors and all my body shakes,

Cameo unless addressed directly!

Nieve wasn't equipped for this. Not truly. Clementine was the one who was supposed to be good with herbs, but Clementine was so scarcely seen these days, Nieve wasn't even sure she was still around. There was Marisol, but Nieve knew so little of her wayward sibling that she couldn't say whether the rosy she-wolf was a suitable practitioner, either. So it fell to her to keep Erzulie's company, for that was all she was capable of offering besides food, and something told her that her dam didn't have much of an appetite.

It was nice to walk along the beach, but impossible to focus on the cold surf on her paws or the majestic beauty of the setting sun. Her eyes were glued instead to her cream-furred mother, who squatted and cried out with such agony that Nieve's ears nestled flat against her scalp. Maman! she exclaimed, but there was nothing more she could do than offer her body as an anchor should Erzulie require it to rise again.

After some time, the Beta retreated into her dug hole in the moors and Nieve paced some short distance away to keep watch, thoughts whirling. She ought to be excited about the arrival of her siblings, and some part of her was... but it was buried under a mountain of worry and skepticism. Worry that the pack would not be able to provide for them all. Skepticism that it would even be worth the effort, for the scars of her siblings' disappearances were deep enough that she couldn't help the low expectations she had for these ones.