The world rests heavy on your shoulders

Aris blinked at his first words. "Kite?" she said in disinterested distraction. Oh. One of the new litter. Right. "I don't know. I guess... I don't know." Last time their mother had "died", Sirius had gone mad and ended up staying down in the Hallows the majority of his time. He'd probably do the same now that she was dead for real, leaving them to cope on their own. Again. "Azure..." she clamped her teeth shut for a moment in uncertainty. Even though she'd thought about it the whole journey, she still wasn't sure how someone went about telling their brother 'oh yeah btw our mom committed suicide with our dad's help and now we're on our own'. "Mom's dead."

The words slipped out with a bluntness that she hadn't really expected, with a raw edge of grief and anger under the tiredness. She swallowed... hard. "She didn't think she could beat the illness. She sacrificed herself at some altar instead. I talked to her before she and dad went to do it... I thought maybe she'd want to be here more than she'd want to leave. I was wrong." Sorry I wasn't good enough at healing to save her, she wanted to say. Sorry I wasn't good enough to convince her. But she knew her brother well enough to think he wasn't going to ever be a shoulder to cry on, even if she'd been the type to cry on someone's shoulder. All she'd get would be don't be a whiner or angry discomfort or... something. So she kept her mouth shut, her head down, and shrugged. "And I'm pregnant, so... that's also news, I guess. For your situational awareness and all. Sorry." Bitter to know that her mother wouldn't be there for her when she gave birth, or to ask advice from, or to see the pups grow up. Even Briar's pups would have some memories of Zee. Hers would have nothing.