Lightning Strike frowned, forlorn but knowing, as she watched Ashborn pace. The others ignored it or knew they could not offer comfort. There was only one that could be of use and it appeared that she would be the one to--well, it had gone on long enough.

---

Once, long ago, the world had made sense to her. She'd grown into her role as protector and defender of her little family, of her mother. She'd fit nicely between the melancholy of Wan Smile and the hope of the not-twins; she was practical and stoic like Grey but with a little more fire and a lot more bite. It'd never been malicious or more than anyone could handle until her small world had been forcibly enlarged and caught fire. Poetic, she supposed, all things considered. She always ended up with the soot.

Heritage had ruined it all. She denounced him as her father, rejected them all as wolves, and yet she suffered. He had her mother, her siblings. It was him who made her mother smile like the sun and she . . . It had only gotten worse.

She'd been stubborn. She'd been angry. She'd run away to the mountains. It always came back to wolves. She dreamed of them and she glared at them and one came home with her. And then another had joined it. That, she could have dealt with. It wouldn't have been pleasant but it would have grown into comfort and ease. It was not her fault that wolves had submitted to her will. She was blameless; she had never sought them out. And the same might have been true of her mother, she supposed, but . . .

It was the spectral wolf that lit the smoldering anger and resentment. That white atrocity that had appeared and bonded to her mother. If it had been from a litter like she knew Half Awake was, it might have been easier to accept. Or maybe it wouldn't have been. It was impossible to know now that the there was almost nothing in the world that remained sacred. It was all infected with the howls of wolves and she . . . She couldn't be here anymore. She couldn't. And she'd tried to linger because she couldn't vanish. She didn't want to cause more hurt even as she was drowning in pain. But she couldn't stay.

---

"It's time, Keepsake," the gray doe informed her mates, sadness and concern thickening her voice. And though she wanted to say much more, there really was nothing left to say. They all knew it.

"I know," Keepsake said, a tiredness in her voice that had not always been there. She had been keen, watching Ashborn, offering what comfort she could without knowing. They seemed... so different, and so similar. But when the path diverged, she knew she had lost her daughter. Keepsake had retreated unto herself, kept small, willed herself to disappear. Turned inward with her hurt, her confusion. Ashborn, ever the flame, had turned outward. Restless and volatile. It was... funny, in the way that it wasn't. Just as she had long ago been left by Heritage, her daughter would now leave her in turn. Something in her- something selfish, something ugly- wondered that same question, time and time again.

Was it her? Was she the reason they left?

Holding onto her loves, holding onto life... it was all the swamp had given her, on her birth. She had not known family, had not known love from when she had been birthed. There was no one waiting to greet her, no one to teach her the ways of the world. Keepsake had fumbled on her own, had fallen and harmed herself in her learning to hunt, with nothing. There was no one to cherish her, like her dreams told her there should be. No one to help her, to love her.

And when she had found Heritage, when she had so desperately held on... she had lost him.

But, no. No. This was not about her. Not now, when her daughter needed her. Swallowing the thick feeling of sorrow away, Keepsake approached her daughter, coming to sit some ways away from her. The wolf- the one that had found her, haunted her after her dreams- had been dismissed. It was just her and her lovely, beautiful daughter now. Her fire-in-flesh child that could know no reason but to find her own way, on her own. The older doe offered her a gentle smile, never insistent, never pressing.

"You're leaving, aren't you?"

@anemosagkelos

The instinctive—no, of course not—blossomed bittersweet and lingered unsaid on her tongue. She'd thought that once. Before. And then fathers had become a true, living nightmare. She swallowed the urge to cry, to scream; it wasn't fair and it wasn't right that it was she who had to leave. Ever since she could see, could walk, she'd become her mother's protector. She'd thwarted further sadness and heartache at any turn, but the smile never did reach Keepsake's eyes. Until him; it curdled her stomach.

"If both of us are to live, yes," she bit out, harsh and raw with all the kindness of hardening lava. She closed her eyes; sighed. "He makes you smile—" she choked back the bitter, I never did that naturally rose. She was not trying to hurt her mother; she did not desire that her mother felt pain. It was only that she could no longer swallow down the resentment and the anger and the want for bloodshed that would win out, if she stayed.

She'd dreamed of it, a few times. A lifeless body and her muzzle stained red. It never brought the happiness she expected; it never made her feel much at all. And that scared her. The idea that she could, would, kill him and that an emptiness would greet her . . . No.

"Gray, him, Lightning Strike," she frowned, "are all wolves. I never thought I was, but, now, even you are a wolf. I don't want to be like him; I can't be like him." All the progress she'd made, it crumbled. She was still a child, still angry, still adrift; alone. The longer she stayed, the worse it became. "I do not belong here." And that was a truth that no one could deny, not because it was true, but because she believed it.

Keepsake's ears pinned back, the accusation spoken just as plainly as the words. If both of us are to live. Her dear, sweet Ashborn had tried desperately to fill in the hole that Heritage had left with his departure, and that was not to say she did not love her. Though she loved each and every one of her children, Ashborn had always been special. Her little one that longed so desperately to lift her up, to cherish her the way she had always wanted. Those days, the bittersweet memories tinged by her own selfish sorrow, would be clutched dearly in her heart- moreso now with the departure of her daughter. Would she ever return? Keepsake could not say. For all that she had tried to laugh, she had tried to smile, it must have hurt dear Ashborn. Must have made her delve deeper and deeper into the isolation she had very nearly missed, in her love's return.

The advent of Lightning Strike could not have helped, either.

"I'm sorry," she managed instead, the smile still not finding her eyes. Should her daughter manage to look, there were tears there, now. Not the attempts to play pretend of yesterday, where her sighs were filled with listless longing, but genuine sorrow. Loss. Was it worth it, she had wondered some nights, to find love when her little ones suffered so because of it? Did they all harbor this... this resentment, this misery, for the mistakes of her youth?

"My dear child, I-" choke back the sob. Bite down the sorrow. No. She would not put her misery onto Ashborn, not when she needed to find her way. The tears came in earnest, now.

"No. You have to find out who you are for yourself. Not for him, not for your siblings, not for me. I... I hope whatever answer you find, you are satisfied with it." If she had failed to keep joy in her tone in Ashborn's youth, it was even moreso gone, now. To think that her daughter held such coldness, such bitterness to her...

She had failed.

"I'm sorry I can't... be what it is you wanted of me. I'm sorry I never could. I don't have your answers, let alone mine," she laughed sadly, shaking her head.

"But... I will always love you. No matter where you go, who you become... I love you, with the whole of my heart. And you take a piece of me, wherever you go."

"You did your best," Ashborn corrected; she could not abandon her need to uplift and protect her mother. It was ingrained in her and, even if given a choice, she didn't think she would choose to change it. If she stayed, though, that instinct would erode and harden, regardless of what she desired. It had already started with her siblings, her words a little more harsh, her bite more vicious, to the point that she'd pulled herself away from them. Anger and shame warred within her, but there was only so much she could rein in. It was past time to leave; she'd already stayed too long.

She found that there were so many replies, though none could make it past her throat, to her mother's statements. It was hard, to hear the tears that her mother shed, but it was no less than she'd felt herself. All those nights, left to feel unwelcome and like the enemy in her own family, her own home. As much as she had no desire to hurt her mother, she couldn't ignore that it was somehow fair. Later, it would sicken her that she could think such a thing; now, it seemed the least of the issues that were tearing her into shreds.

"I would rather love you from afar than hate you from your side," she eventually said. The words were thick and difficult; then again, so was leaving. She wished she could have granted her mother more comfort, more love. More anything in this moment. And yet she knew she had nothing left to give, her emotions so raw and bleeding that she'd felt herself on more than one occasion drift towards dreams of an end. That, she would keep that to herself. It was nothing her mother, her siblings, or anyone else need know. But the pain, the upset, the anger was needed. They had to know why she felt it necessary to leave.

There was much she wished to say, but the longer they talked, the longer it would be until she could ever think to return. She couldn't promise to return, though she knew that one day she would have to, because she did not know that a return would be a good thing. Not for herself, not for him. Not even for Keepsake. And maybe that was a sign that she had waited too long, that there was too much that had broken her into pieces. It was too late now for such knowledge to do her any good.

"I love you, Mother," she released the breath at least. "I hope we meet again, someday."

It wasn't enough. It was less than either of them deserved. But it was true and all that she had. She would've liked to press herself close one last time, to nuzzle into her mother's chest and—it hurt too much, that thought alone.

Ashborn stood, closed her eyes, and started her trek with each painful step away from all that she had ever known. All those she had loved. The one she hated. And to where . . . She doubted even the MotherFather knew that.

"I'll wish it every night. That you find your joy, your self, and you come home to me. Even if it's not forever... even when you find your new life out there, I want to see you again. Happy." Her own sorrows, her own heartbreak aside, it was true. To see her Ashborn returned to the bright and fervent spirit she had once been would be the greatest gift Keepsake could be given. Even if her daughter was not hers to cherish, even if she was meant to find a home elsewhere... it would be enough. She would have seen that bright smile, that burning passion once more to keep near and dear within her own heart.

"I won't give you undue advice. Nothing to be good, to... act in some way you think would make me proud. You already have. Be yourself, find who you want to be. I know... one day, somehow, when the MotherFather allows it, we'll find one another once again." She sat and watched, a quiet vigil as her daughter departed, off into the unknown. The swamp was vast, the world was large... but she would be okay.

It was only hours later, when the sun had set and all that remained was her, that she let herself wail. A loud, raucous sound that echoed in the home she had come to know and love, now one less in number than it had been before. The tears streamed her face- more than she had let herself cry for Heritage, more than she had cried for herself. This was her daughter, her baby. She knew, logically, so many children did not remain with their parents. They left for new, better lives. Some didn't even know their parents. But her pac- no. Her children, were so much a part of her, now...

It took both of them, Heritage and Lightning Strike, to bring her back to the den. Sleep did not come easy, nor did it come for a very long time.