Dún do shúil, a rún mo chroí

Tornach, for the first time since he'd been young, had been truly happy. He'd been in love, he'd had his new flock of sheep and a new nomadic lifestyle, and despite his limp and his scarred visage, he'd been happy.

But he'd found happiness much too late in life, and time had taken his love away from him far too soon and left him bereft. The sudden drop back into a lonely existence that he'd never minded before he had discovered what it was to have more, aged him more than his injuries ever had. If it hadn't been for his companions, he may have simply laid down one day and not gotten back up.

As it was, he drifted through the days like a ghost, hardly noticing the world around him. When one day the flock passed by the body of an older female, he barely glanced at it before following along behind the meandering sheep. Just another victim of a world that cared nothing for individuals and simply swallowed up their lives without thought. It was only when movement caused the sheep to shy away suddenly from the body that he gave a second glance. It wasn't, after all, often that dead bodies suddenly moved.

His second glance caught the minty-green gaze of a small pup peeking out from under the limp foreleg of the body. Though the eyes of the fuzzy pup were wide and the ears pressed against the small head by the foreleg, there was no fear in the pup's gaze. Just a calm, quiet acceptance. How many other wolves had walked past the body and left the pup to starve rather than take on the responsibility of someone else's pup, to fill that young mind with the knowledge that no one was going to ever stop to help? For the pup to have accepted that as fact without any judgement of the wolves who had ignored the sight?

Tornach could not walk away.

Taking care of the pup had done much to heal the emptiness Kestrel's disappearance from his life had left in him. Corbie took to his nomadic life following the sheep like a fish to water, and with her calm, firm manner even as a pup she did well handling them. What she'd learned from her mother before her death mixed easily with what she learned from Tornach, and the unique person that she grew into constantly left Tornach proud to be her guardian.

But everything came to an end eventually.

Though it had been some time since he'd been a practicing healer, he was still well trained in it. Trained enough to recognize the truth - he was dying. He regretted now his solitary lifestyle, because his death would leave the young Corbie alone again just as surely as her mother's death had. So, driving the flock far from the luxurious grasslands they'd grown used to, across a desert, he had brought Corbie to the borders of his niece's pack.

Now he lifted his muzzle to call for Aurielle, as Tam worked to keep the sheep gathered a polite distance away out of earshot.