grey skies

As his healing progressed, Tornach had been working on rehabilitating himself. He was getting old, and simply didn't bounce back from any sort of injury the way he'd used to, let alone being crippled and blinded and burned. So he'd been taking it slowly, carefully increasing the distance from Valhalla he traveled as he relearned how to walk with one less good leg, how to navigate obstacles with one less eye, how to compensate for his torn and burned ear when trying to hear. It helped him on a purely emotional level to get out, too, away from the constant eyes of the Valhallan pack wolves. He'd never been a particularly vain wolf, but he was still painfully aware of how drastically his appearance had changed, how the sight of him must affect others now. It hurt him a lot more than he'd have ever expected it to, to be... deformed. It had never bothered him to see and treat others likewise injured, but to look in a pool and see a stranger staring at him...

So he spent as much time away as his body could handle, and otherwise had remained curled in the alcove he'd been given the use of. And yes, it had been strange and painful to be there once again with all the memories, but he knew that it was well past time for him to confront the pain and sadness those memories brought him - though perhaps it would have been better if he'd confronted that sooner rather than having it compounded by the misery of his wounds.

By this point in his healing he'd been managing some overnight time out in the world, though not much, and this was the furthest he'd pushed himself. It was good grazing land, better than in the southern part of the west that was mostly arid, and he had to wonder why his mother had chosen to remain there, had fought for that place, even though there were better places to raise a pack. He'd never asked her, and he was too late by many years to do so now. And then his brother and his niece had both chosen to remain there, probably out of tradition at this point. He supposed if he died at this point, Regulus or Aurielle might choose to bury him there. Or maybe not, if he died alone out here. He didn't think he particularly cared one way or the other.

On that particularly grim thought, he lowered himself carefully down to rest beside the river that flowed still somewhat grey with the ash that the rains still carried down. The healer in him knew that it was just the depression that came from struggling to recover from life-changing injuries, but even knowing that it was far easier to let himself fall into it.