Only Dead Fish Swim With The Stream

For a while there was just quiet with the background noise of the crackling fire while he helped his mother with prepping the fish to be dried, laying out the fish for her as she gutted them and helping with getting them onto sticks so that they could begin drying by the fire. He always liked having something to keep his paws busy, but especially so right now when he was looking for a distraction. He could see everyone around him moving on, living their lives, and he was starting to feel like he was falling behind. He felt like he was struggling to keep up and bottled up every emotion out of a fear of dragging any of them back down with him. He had almost settled back down into as close to a neutral state as he could be as he laid by the fire and his mother went off to wash her paws. He let out a long, slow sigh while she was gone, watching the fire dance and the small embers that floated off from it.

He didn't immediately look toward his mom as she came back and laid beside him, but when he felt her paw reach up and comb through the long hairs at the beginning of his mane he shifted his sapphire gaze down toward her with a bit of trepidation. His gray ears flicked and something between a chuckle and a scoff escaped him when she mentioned how he and Tara were almost grown, his eyes shifting back down to look at his own paws. Physically he had certainly gone through quite the growth spurt over the last couple of seasons. He was still a good ways off from matching his uncle, but he was much taller than his mother or Tira and he was taller than he remembered his father being. He didn't really feel like he had gotten anywhere close to being grown in any other way though. Mentally, emotionally... He felt like nothing had really changed.

He felt his mother's foreleg stretch up around his shoulders and that chipped away at the armor he had built up as she talked about his unconventional upbringing and his father's absence being particularly hard. He desperately tried to maintain his composure, his expression not changing much with the exception of his ears falling back against his head when she kissed his forehead. Her telling him that she could see how sad he was despite all his efforts to hide it hurt. It felt like all of the struggling he had been going through on his own had been for nothing and now here he was, no better than he had been and nothing to show for it. Her paw brushed his cheek and forced him to turn his gaze back toward hers while his eyes stung with unshed tears that he was trying to avoid. His throat felt tight and thick with emotion as she told him to talk to her, unlatching that last lock that he had been keeping held back for so long.

Arc hesitated for a moment before he finally gave in and laid his head down, hunching down to be able to fit more or less in her embrace with his head up against her chest and across her other foreleg that wasn't around his shoulders. She might be much smaller than him now, but in that moment he felt like the tiny pup that she used to carry in a basket. It was hard for him to find any words for a few moments as tears started to cloud his vision, all of the emotions and thoughts he had been hiding starting to come to the surface. "He's just... gone," he said softly, having to swallow past the lump in his throat to speak. "Like... Yeah, Mojito isn't really around and that sucks, but... It's possible to see him. I know you don't like grandpa, but... It's possible to see him. Dad... Dad is gone and... and it's my fault." His voice grew rough and broken the longer he spoke until the tears finally caught up with him and started spilling over his cheeks in quiet sobs. "I couldn't do anything! I-I just... I just had to stand there and... and then he was just gone!" He pressed his face into his mother's chest as if that could save him from the onslaught of overwhelming emotions, finally letting out everything he had been holding back.

"Arcturus Indarra"