nowhere to go

Zoey was a fool.

A damn fool.

She should've known better than to cast her eyes from the obvious. To so openly jump into this pack and agree to be mentored by the Warden. To open her heart so fully to everyone in the pack, to explore and be merry. To let go of the past. Because the past caught up to her with teeth and claws, swallowing her whole and dragging her back down to the darkness she thought she'd escaped. The Menagerie had dissolved. Miss Wren was gone. Apparently, some wolves had found blood with her scent on it, the scene of some fight likely instigated by a predator..or perpetrator. They didn't know. But the rest of the words and rumors were drowned out as the yearling crumpled next to the trunk of pine tree, almost in shock. Her head couldn't take it. She'd already been suffering from intense nightmares, the waves of panic at being abandoned yet again. But it did happen. Again. Did life hate her so much it was willing to take her new home, chew it up, and spit it out in some tragic mess? Would she ever find a place to call her own? No. She wouldn't. It had happened to her family, taken away by those fucking mushrooms. Gone. Then it was Abaven, her saving grace and a place she thought she'd stay in forever to cultivate her knowledge and love for studying artifacts. Gone. Then it was the Menagerie, with Miss Audra saving her from being left to rot at the falls that day, taking her to a place she was just beginning to believe would never leave her again.

Gone, gone, gone.

The russet-furred girl bid her goodbyes to Miss Audra as the woman had promised her previous pack she'd return if anything should happen, but the thought of her having a home to return to and the yearling did not brought her indescribable pain. She couldn't move, the only noise from her lips some muffled wails. She was the lost child, all over again. She wasn't a kid but wasn't a capable adult either. Just a lost little girl with nowhere to go. Not a new story, not to her, but it hurt all the same. Her goggles were sat next to her, having had to take them off from the tears she was spilling. Her cheeks were soaked, her nose running, the stillness of the beautiful patch of woodland interrupted by her sniffling and sheer helplessness. She was old enough to pick her self up to her feet and move forward. But the setbacks she'd experienced and the trust she had lost brought her back here, again and again. As a lost child.

Zoey cried out to nothing, to noone, airing out the sheer grief in her sobs so they wouldn't swallow her alive.

Speech