ACE, the Helpful Place

Tornach had left his bounty of rose hips drying in the sun-dappled interior of the barn, spread out with Aiden to protect them from rodents. He had needed to take the time to deseed them and get them ready to dry, lest he lose the whole harvest, but he had chafed at the delay. Even the suspicious Aiden had admitted that the stock had been treated well in his absence. Fewer predators dared venture into pack lands at all, and none of the stock had been so much as peeked at while he had been away gathering the rose hips. Perched in the rafters of the barn in an area with gaping holes in the roof, the falcon was perfectly capable of keeping an eye on both the livestock and the drying herb stocks, so there was nothing holding him back from a second journey.

This time he carried nothing with him, running freely without the sledge or a travois dragging at him. The momentary illusion of freedom was invigorating, allowed him to forget for a brief time his worries as he just ran. But all too soon reality came crashing back down when he found himself on what had been the border of Zuriel's pack... And it was gone. He stood for a moment in stunned, pained disbelief. Gone, again? Just as he had found her, found that he had nieces and nephews, they were all... gone? He moved further into the land, hoping he had been wrong, but scented no borders, was accosted by no border guards. There was no trace of them.

Sitting, slouching really, he peered around himself before lifting his head in a bewildered, lonely howl for his sister, for his nephew, for... someone.