not all scars are visible

Ophie had been distant, just a ghost since the funeral. She hadn't attended, didn't have the heart to, but she knew what had happened all the same. Dark and terrible things; the smell of burned flesh and charred remains was stuck in the back of her throat. Thick enough to make her want to gag. In tragedy family ought to pull together, to support each other when they needed it the most, but even from the side lines she saw her family fracturing. Splitting at the seams as they were pulled in all manner of directions. Everything was ruined, wrong in the worst of ways and Ophie just couldn't find the resolve to just smile and keep making do.

She'd never had much of a sense of drive or direction in her life, simply going with the Fatalis-flow but now the world felt slanted beneath her paws as she wandered aimlessly. Unable to so much look any of her packmates or family members in the eye. What would they think of her? That she was a coward? Weak? They wouldn't be wrong. She waited for the impeding sense of guilt and dread that usually followed such anxious thoughts, the urge to scramble to do and be better but she felt nothing. Just tired and alone. Even the world sounded quieter than it should, the noises dull and lifeless as though her ears were stuffed with cotton. If she was being followed then she didn't care to check, she wasn't a puppy anymore and the muck and mud that clung to her form was the only normal thing about her that day.

Everything else was off, like someone else was wearing her façade.

She stumbled to a stop, the earth squelching beneath her paws. Sometimes she wanted to lay down and become one with the greens and browns, to rot and just be like that old log over there. Except old trunks didn't tend to be purple. Ophie blinked slowly, her brows drawn as an elegant "huh" passed her dry lips. Had she the sense to she would have glanced about and spotted her sisters companions, but she didn't and simple just... looked, her eyes not picking up on the finer details of things.