I'm sorry that I need you so

Home. As Shaye broke down, Theory did with her. She collapsed next to her, the wolf who had raised her and whom she had known longer than her own mother. "We will return there in the spring. We must survey the lands and look for any that we may have lost or who have come looking for us. This isn't something I want to do with any great haste," she said quickly. If it was something she even did at all. Counselling the pack first was a priority. A necessity. Theory wouldn't make any decisions without the support of the wolves that she was charged to lead.

"I will go with you. I will be by your side," she whispered, pressing her muzzle urgently into Shaye's cheek. Theo nuzzled her insistently, not ready to admit the age that she saw clearly written across her mentor's face and body. "I owe you every kindness I can - you taught me to be kind," Theory said, tears streaming freely now from her eyes. How often had she cried over these past few months? It felt like she cried every day - in private, in front of her father, always hidden away from the pack. She wouldn't let them see her cry.

"And when it is my time, I will come to your grave and wish that you will welcome me into your den again, just as you did the first time. I hope you will be proud." The young girl wept openly now, for the sake of grief that she didn't yet feel but knew was looming over her. She wept for change and the destruction that had been wreaked by the volcano. She wept for Shaye, whom she would be lost without.