Moonspear you could turn my sorrow into song

Stars peppered the skies, a waxing “gibbons” moon sailing high and partly obscured by a skirt of wispy, silver clouds. In the distance, she could see the silhouette of the Sunspire Mountains, their icy caps gleaming palely in the sparse moonlight. Meerkat even thought she saw a shooting star out of the corner of her eye, though the moment she turned to look, it winked out of sight.

Njord spoke then and she angled her muzzle toward him, rapt. He spoke highly of Sialuk and the mountain, though there was a heaviness in his words. Meerkat sensed he missed the seaside cliffs and the wolves who populated them. It was strange to think that they’d thought so little of him in the end but he’d always put them ahead of his own dignity. It was stranger still to think that she, of all people, had come to bitterly loathe the mere memory of them.

Me too, she said quietly. It’ll still be a huge adjustment for all of us, she acknowledged in the next breath, but I’m hopeful things will be better here.

Had the bear never made another appearance, they still would have come here, Meerkat knew. Its arrival had simply expedited the decision she had already made on behalf of her family. Regardless of the bear, her husband and sons—son, now—deserved to live somewhere where they wouldn’t be treated as lessers just for sporting a little extra flesh between their legs.

She realized her jaw was tense and she released it, letting out a breath and meeting Njord’s eyes as she coaxed, Tell me how you’re doing, while reaching up to rest a paw gently against the scarred side of his face.