tangled in the years

While the changes in the pack's structures were a tell that time had passed unheeded, it was when her gaze swung around and up to meet a familiar-unfamiliar blue eyed gaze that she really understood just how long she had lost. She felt this understanding as a bolt of electricity that shot through her to the very marrow of her bones, or whatever ghosts had for both bones, and marrow. This was a face she'd last seen as a gangly barely-yearling, barely more than a pup. Now he was a man grown and in his prime. Years had passed, not moments.

She closed her eyes briefly against the rush of sadness and loss that realization brought. She had missed so much... So much time with her children she could never retrieve.

Also it made it far more obvious now that she was, in fact dead, but somehow... returned?

She opened her eyes once again and mustered a soft, if slightly confused, smile for her son. "Cairo," she breathed. "I've been away so long... it feels as though I've only just woken from a deep sleep..." She shook her head incredulously. "What has happened here?"