braying jackass

This must be Valentine then. The dots connected in Theory's head to finally make a complete picture. It took a little bit more self control than she expected to resist the urge to nod to herself. Everything made a little bit more sense now. It was increasingly strange to think that this was her grandfather. Trying to ignore the particularly itchy, stranger-than-fiction feeling that the entire encounter gave her, Theory focused on the conversation at hand. "I don't expect it to be the same. In fact, I want to... well, I want to leave. Move the pack somewhere that you can't even see the volcano's peak," she said wistfully. "Maybe the regrowth will change the landscape enough that it will be as if we're living in a new place. As it stands, most of my time in our territory feels like retracing my steps back and forth over the same graves." Her voice was flat and affect less. It was true. She hadn't shared these feelings with anyone but Corvus, and even then, she'd painted it like a prettier picture... but something told her Valentine might understand where she was coming from.

"Yes, it was sudden," she replied, side-eyeing him just a bit. Hadn't he been the one to cast Rhyme out of the family for fraternizing with Shaye? Theo was surprised that he was maintaining a moderate level of civility, but she appreciated it. She was in no mood to pick fights with her actual grandpa over ghosts and family history. "Landslide. She was buried alive next to Odysseus in the aftermath of the volcano." Theory still found it difficult to talk about. Much of the days immediately after discovering Shaye's body were a blur. Endless hours of digging until her paws were bloody, endless hours spent screaming into the yawning hole they excavated to recover her body. Shaye had wanted to be buried next to Vail, she'd made that explicitly clear. Theory would have sooner died than left that wish unfulfilled. There were small stretches of time when she was deep in the pit that she wished she could fall down dead on top of them both.

"She's buried next to Vail. That's part of what roots us to the land, I suppose. Everyone is buried there. It's not like you can try and rationalize yourself to the dead," she said, ending the sentence with a biting laugh. "But Rhyme has been doing better in recent weeks. We've been talking more about the past. He's mentioned his mother..." she trailed off, letting Valentine fill in the blank.