Where've you been?

The season of gathering food for the animals and herbs for himself was over, and the season for slowly doling out the hoarded foodstuffs to his stock had begun, but Tornach was finding himself restless and... troubled. His trip to Celestial, discovering that he was an uncle, discovering how much had changed and how much he still didn't know about his family... it had shaken him. But even more so had the last trip of the autumn season before the snows had brought an end to any more harvesting. A trip a little further to the east and north than his home - where he'd scented Zuriel on the borders of a new pack. Combined with learning how much had changed elsewhere in his family, the fact that he was so close and she hadn't come to find him was... really troubling him. He'd been in the Range for years now and yet none of his family had bothered visiting him for nearly all that time. The last time he'd seen Zuriel was... well, it was right after Celestial had been challenged for, when he'd just found out about their mother. And now she was only a few lands away, and still he hadn't seen her. None of his family had shown up when he'd tried to get the packs to come to his failed trade fair either. In fact, the last time any of his siblings had made the effort to seek him out was when Regulus had happened to need his healing knowledge. It hadn't exactly been a social occasion.

Was he destined to have no contact with his family unless he made the first move? Even though it seemed like they were constantly moving and changing and having their families and having big news to share while he had lived in the same place, doing the same things, year after year with nothing new to prompt him to seek them out and tell them?

He had been brooding about it since he'd returned from his gathering expedition, and he'd grown moodier and moodier until Aiden had finally snapped at him to go do something about it. She was pretty even-tempered for a falcon, so for her to snap at him he must have been pretty annoyingly mopey. She was right, of course, so with her to watch the animals and feed them regularly - quite a feat for a small, lightweight animal like a bird, but one she'd done before at need and since she was volunteering... - he set out north and east to the borders where he'd scented Zuriel. It was cold, and snow had begun gathering thickly everywhere between the range and the mountains so he couldn't take too long away from his stock, but he did need to do something about the distance that had sprung up between him and his family.

Standing at the border of the inhospitable lands this pack had claimed, he had sudden misgivings. Zuriel couldn't possibly thrive someplace this desolate in the middle of winter, could she? Hunting in the mountains would be difficult at the best of times, let alone in the dead of winter. Concerned and uncertain, he lifted his muzzle in a long, low call. Wanting to see his sister again had been what prompted his trip, but now he felt a strong need to reassure himself that she was ok. This pack wasn't family - would they be as inclined to safeguard her wellbeing as family would? He wasn't so certain, and his natural distrust of packs only magnified that uncertainty.