Cabhair liom

Limping on his right foreleg still - by the time he'd been able to put the dislocated joint back in place, there had been significant damage to the soft tissue surrounding it, and time had done little to heal it when resting was not an option - and herbal poultices still covering the ruins of the left side of his face, Tornach stumbled in near-blind exhaustion behind three equally exhausted elk. Aiden tacked overhead, ocassionally swooping down to adjust the course of what remained of the herd he'd saved from the wildfire that had chased Legion from the home they'd stolen from him. When he'd - blinded and scarred from his fight with Chaos and the wildfire that had (perhaps mercifully) cauterized his wounds and left burns down his neck and his shoulder - had thrown open the gate holding in the panicking elk, he had been bowled over as they'd stampeded to escape the wildfire they could smell so closely. That was when he'd lost most of them, and had dislocated his right shoulder, but with Aiden's help he'd managed to turn some of them to safety, and he'd ripped open the pens holding hares and prairie chickens and ducks to allow them to escape, knowing he'd never be able to keep any of them together. The elk he'd saved he had herded towards the west, away from the volcano and towards Valhalla, but other predators made desperate by the volcano had picked off many of them, and disease and simple starvation had taken its toll on the small herd until he was left with just these three - a cow with a recent leg injury from a cougar that he'd barely driven off (that attack had cost him a young bull as well) and two nervous calves from that spring. A poor start to a new herd, but it was all he had left.

"Tornach." Aiden's voice roused him from his daze, and he raised his head to see the falcon had landed on the stone wall of Valhalla's lands. The three elk milled between him and the wall in confusion, but they were too exhausted to be agitated. He'd made it? The better part of a season trying to guide a half-wild herd here, but... he'd made it. For a while he'd thought he would never make it here... and then he'd been too exhausted and sick to do more than put one paw in front of the other, let alone worry about the future. He swayed in place for a moment before he could lift his muzzle and call out a weary song for his niece. She had little reason to care what became of him, given that he'd never truly been a part of her life, but if he were going to ever come back from this he would need to beg her help.