níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin

Tornach had expected to be dead long hence. He'd been dying when he had introduced Corbie to his family and left her behind to seek someplace quiet and private in which to die peacefully, without ever needing to worry that his ward would need to watch him fade away. He had left Tam to watch over Corbie and the flock he had left to her, and he knew the border collie would take his job quite seriously as he always did. Aiden, who had been at his side since he had been young, had come with Tornach to keep vigil with him in his last days, and had sworn to Tornach that she would carry word of his death to Corbie and Aurielle so they wouldn't be left wondering. What they chose to do with his body after he was gone was between them - leave him where he lay, bring him back to Valhalla to bury him, whatever they chose. He had no preference in the matter now and certainly would have no preference then.

But despite everything his body had endured over the years, it was too stubborn to give up just yet and he'd found himself ticking on and on long after he had thought he would be gone. At times he felt guilty that he had deprived Corbie of time they could have spent together after all, but then the Ooze had struck him and he was more glad than ever that he had left his ward behind. He would be damned before he put her through watching him be slowly consumed by the fungus that was taking over his body, the way he suffered from it.

The way his breath came thick and liquidy into lungs that were spotted with fungal infections and drowning in the ooze that accompanied them. He coughed up glowing ooze nearly constantly now, and for a while now he'd been vomiting up the same that had made its way down his throat to irritate his stomach. He couldn't keep anything else down anyway, even water, and his swollen gums, his sticky, swollen tongue, the rapid heartbeat all spoke of the severity of the dehydration that gripped him now even with his faithful falcon friend seeking to drip water into his mouth as much as she could. Even had his face not been crusted over with fungal patches, scabs, and ooze he'd have been blind just from the side effects of his dehydration, but what the dehydration didn't take the fungus did. It grew in patches and bits and pieces all over him now, as though it could not wait for him to be dead before it consumed his flesh. It had been weeks since he'd been able to walk at all and the sores from the pressure of the ground had sprouted mushrooms nearly immediately upon being worn into his thin skin.

Except for the rise and fall of his chest and the rattling wheeze of his breath, the rapid pulse in his too-thin neck, he appeared all but dead now. One could be forgiven for not realizing at first glance that this was not a corpse that had lain thus expired for weeks. Sometimes it felt like he had always been in pain, and that he always would be in pain, for all eternity, and nothing else existed for him.

And then, suddenly, the pain was gone.

Tornach breathed in a breath free from the fungus, free from the ooze, and felt stronger than he had in months. He opened his brilliant sapphire eyes and could actually see Aiden asleep on a branch overhead, her head resting on her back and lines of exhaustion written over her sleek form. He rose, marveling at how easily his body responded to him. Leaving behind the fungus-ridden, stilled gray body without looking back, because he had no need of it any longer and indeed did not feel it belonged to him - he could only pity the dead creature - he bounded away from the camp with its stench of long illness and death. He didn't question the miracle that had given him back the strength and the speed that time had long ago robbed him of, and that had removed the scars left by the wildfire that had swept over the knolls after the volcano erupted. He just reveled in it, reveled in the way he had endurance now that he'd never had before, as though his body just did not need to rest any longer. He did not feel hungry, or thirsty despite how long he'd gone without water and food. He was no longer bowed beneath the weight of the fungal growths.

He was free.

He found himself at the edge of Valhalla's lands in an instant - as though no time at all had passed, simply there, but he ignored that incongruity - and bounded to scrabble over the wall and fling himself with gay abandon over it to land softly on the ground on the other side and continue on. Who should he find first to give them the news of his healing? Corbie? Aurielle? Aurielle he knew he could find here, but how would he know if Corbie had stayed? It had been her own choice, after all. Or should he find his grandnieces and grandnephews, and finally spend the time with them that he had missed out on?

He raced on across the territory to the cavern den where he had begun his life all those years ago with his pallid, pink-eyed sister, past a multitude of places with their memories of long ago. Memories both good and bad, but he no longer made any distinction between them. They were all just memories of a life he had left behind but would never forget. They had made him who he was, and so he could never regret them, even now. He was beyond regrets.

The ancient young wolf paused as the walls of the ravine closed around him, to bask in those memories and the cessation of pain both physical and emotional. "Aurielle," he called out softly, the word carrying a strange echo that he chose to disregard. "I've come home."