be as you've always been

Shaye hadn’t slept, and wasn’t certain when she would next get the chance. From running search and rescue through the blaze with Winter, to fetching and carrying for the healers as they treated the wounds, as well as applying some herbs herself. Her past experiences as a healer had been some use, but she was so tired she began to do more harm than good.

She had a quick clean in the rapids, the smoky scent to her coat still hadn’t faded, and there was ash between her ears and across her back that hadn’t quite washed out. She felt like she would never be clean again, nor smell air fresh and clean from smoke. The fire might have gone out in the night, but the smoke still lingered. The scent of burnt flesh and fauna was fresh.

A tired, weary Alpha would find Epitaph in the shallows of the rapids. She could understand the sentiment, her own blistered feet enjoyed the feel of the cool, as she took a step in, and stopped beside him, groaning softly as she lowered herself to her belly in front of him. She had heard by now of how he had approached the lioness, and wasn’t sure if she was angry or pleased. Angry, that he had paid no mind to the important matters she told the pack, and thus putting others at risk, or pleased that the timid frightened man had put himself at risk for the sake of his daughter, not knowing that the lioness was friend.

Either way, she was reminded of the first day she had seen him, of him sitting by these rapids, injured and weary, and unwilling to bother anyone in the pack or ask for help. She had dragged him to her den and set him up there, and he had become a part of her life, of her kids lives.
“I’ve heard that fires can help a place grow, that it removes underbrush and debris, and opens a forest up to sunlight. I know that’s not the case here, not exactly… but things can still grow again after a fire. We will tend to the soil, and plant seeds, we will grow back the thicket, together, as a pack. We’ll have room to set a larger place for an herb garden.” she promised him, needing the words for herself as much as for him.