Winter Preperations

While she told Inverno some of her story, she observed his reactions with sad yet curious eyes. A part of her felt grateful to him for his reaction to Zephyr not being happy to see her. He appeared to tense, frustrated, not saying anything. Only his posture changed a bit but it made her feel better knowing someone else could be just as puzzled and upset by that behavior as she was. When she mentioned that Z had blamed her sister though, she could see the bubbling anger that just barely managed to stay below the surface. Caelum quickly understood why, after all, even a blind wolf could've see the emotion that the very mention of Ilona elicited from him starting sometime back when they'd begun patrolling together.

Her ears pricked up a bit when he spoke, saying Zephyr was wrong. Caelum wished she could be surprised that her mate had been so quick to accept false information... the discovery of all the other fallen wolves would have left him itching for someone to blame. Still, it had always upset her to know he had so quickly cast blame on Ilona. Her sister had been nothing but helpful and kind to everyone she met, to think that she was to blame... Not in a million years would that ever be the case. Sadly until now she had not known the real story and was unable to defend the memory of her sister when her name was tarnished with the blame for the attack.

Cae listened to Inverno patiently, her face soft with concern for Vern. He did his best to keep pushing through, to tell his story in it's entirety which she appreciated. Hearing how things had gone down wasn't easy though. If the bloody battleground she had discovered afterwards was any indication, the fight had been a terribly grotesque and uneven one... Of course if the wicked creatures could do what they'd done to her children... taking out an entire pack wouldn't cause them to lose any sleep. It made her shudder and she looked at the ground, trying to think about... anything else at all, just for a second. Revisiting these memories must be hard for both of them.

He struggled to talk, eventually unable to fully continue. It was clear he had stayed at the scene longer than she had. Her reaction had been to run, to search for survivors and finding every prone, lifeless form empty of life she eventually had to leave, to run because knowing everyone was gone was too much and she couldn't deal with it all. Every day she beat herself up for not keeping tract of who was who, for not seeing if the numbers added up. Her thoughts were interrupted by Inverno moving a sort distance from her and sitting so he was facing the gently rippling water of the lake. Again, Caelum only had her sympathetic understanding. Relaying the horrors he'd seen couldn't be easy, especially if it was so hard to just hear. She knew carrying her own memories with her was a burden almost too heavy to bare, and for once instead of turning this remorse and sadness into self loathing, she could instead seek to help someone else and not have to focus on herself.

For a while she stayed sitting and just let everything sort of settle in the air. She couldn't think of what to say for a while. Everything was still sorting itself out in her head, and she just wanted to make everything be okay again but she could't and it made her wanna scream.  Eventually she moved closer to Vern, sitting just behind him and very gently nuzzled the man's back very gently in hopes it might provide some small comfort.

"I'm sure you did your best, and I thank you for it." She murmured, doing her best to keep her voice steady. She missed her sister terribly, missed her family. For the first time in far too long she had someone that knew what it was like to feel all of this and to lose so many.

Eventually she wandered over to a patch of particularly soft looking grass and let herself sink to the ground, beckoning for Inverno to come rest near her. She hadn't even realized how deeply tired she was of being alone. It had gotten to the point where she rarely ate, just walked and walked and tried to go whatever distance it would take to get the hell away from everything that had left her broken and hurting. Unfortunately she was coming to realize it simply wasn't possible to walk away from your sadness. Stretching, thin legs reaching out as far as possible, she let out a weary sigh and turned back to Inverno.

"I'm not really certain who I'm supposed to be now. If that makes any sense. Before, I was an Alpha, a mother, a mate, a sister. Now I'm just... Caelum, I guess. I could go so many ways but it's impossible to know which path to travel when I'm barely able to accept I'm no longer on the old one," a bitter laugh followed her words, eating up the pause while she searched for words, "What do you think? I could go back down old roads. I could... Hell, I don't even know. Earlier I had so much in my head when i saw you but now words fail me. I suppose I'm considering the future, whether or not I could bring myself to be a leader again. When I saw him, Zephyr was so angry at me. He looked at me and he saw weakness and frailty and ever since he told me that all I can think about is if it's true and if maybe I'm not meant to be anyone's Alpha."

All this left her tense, causing the woman to repeatedly have to try and relax her muscles, making an effort to not look stressed to the point of breaking like she felt inside. Her entire life up until these long months had been so much easier, she'd never had to think about if she was strong or weak, never been worried about if she was good enough. If she had those thoughts before, would she have been able to become better sooner? Reigning in her thoughts she asked, "But, maybe that's enough about me. Have you considered what you will do now? It's almost winter, and I've heard there was an illness a lot of wolves were catching."