Out For A Stroll [Caelia]

Aurielle’s brow points lifted at Caelia’s silence, head cocking as she let it draw out. As they ventured further, she nodded at Caelia’s response, understanding the pain in her eyes. While their experiences were different, Aurielle knew the feeling of losing a parent. Solveiga had not died, no, but she had lost the mother she’d had before the slavers had stolen her and Aramis away.

Her head tipped to Caelia as she said, softly, “In many ways, she was like having a mother when my own was taken from me.” Her head turned fully and she looked into the young wolf’s eyes.

“Our experiences are very different, but similar, in a way. My mother still lives. But in many ways, I lost my mother when the slavers took her and Aramis. You’ve not met them, nor my father. Before the slavers, my mother was a kind, gentle healer, with a soul made in the light. When my father first met her, she was timid, and he helped her find her strength. The slavers ripped that away from her. And stole the mother I knew before she was taken.

"The trials she went through—the starvation, the beatings, the constant strain of worrying that my brother may die, that she may die and never see myself or my Da again… It broke her. She was not a weak wolf. She survived for her son and the hope that she and he would be saved someday.”

She paused, teeth clenched in a stab of pain, eyes closing. “I am not trying to say I know how you feel—everyone’s way of coping and feeling loss is unique. But I am here for you and your siblings. You may try to talk to Paladin—he too lost his parents, around the same age as you, but to different causes.”

She sighed out a long breath and shook her head before her eyes opened and scanned ahead before she lowered her nose to sniff at the scents around them. “But I imagine you really don’t want to speak of such things. So, what are the first things you’d like to learn in regards to leading?”

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think