The crack in my foundation

Tamsyn moved slowly around him. A part of him registered that she was hurt, aching, exhausted. It registered, but it was like the realisation was hitting a different wolf. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. To take over, to take charge. To carry the weight. He couldn’t do anything, he could only stare, as she moved about his unyielding form, and carefully took up the pieces of his wife.

Of his wife

There was still a lingering touch of her scent here. She had walked into this clearing, innocently started a warm fire to fight off the chill of this second-winter. Perhaps the smoke had taken them first. Perhaps she had died quietly in her sleep from the smoke. But what if she had woken, near the end? What if she had seen her son burning. What if she had felt her flesh searing off her bones?

He didn’t move, he couldn’t. He was frozen, staring at her antlers. At least the skull was gone. Tamsyn had picked it up right from under his nose and carefully added it to the gruesome stash.

He stared a while longer, and then carefully stacked the antlers on top. He wished a piece of the king cheetah coat he had made her had survived. King cheetah…. He laughed suddenly. “Winter cheetah.’ he muttered under his breath. It had taken Zee a long time to convince him it had been a different species of the cat, and not just a winter coat.

Tamsyn was speaking, begging him to live for the pack, for them. He flinched as she mentioned losing Resin, that they would the both of them survive this. The bitch. The audacity of her, that she thought he had any desire to outlive what had happened here. It was nothing but her selfishness that kept him to this earth.

He let the smaller, injured wolf pull the wagon. Something that only a day past he never would have let happen. He trudged along beside her, stiff and painful on burnt paws and broken soul. “Whatever happens, Tamsyn, remember that you chose freely to drag me on.” He said coldly as he continued to limp along beside her. Refusing to look at her or the burden she dragged with them.

"Speech"