Namesake

Ember didn’t know why she felt so compelled to be so honest with this stranger. Perhaps it was the motherly vibe she sensed coming from the older fae, or maybe it was because Ember had never had a reason to fear strangers before in her young life. Whatever it was, something the girl had said provoked a reaction in the familiar stranger. A gentle nuzzling behind her ear caught Ember by surprise, the midnight-furred pup glancing up swiftly to the much taller fae. The nameless stranger continued to explain that it was hard to lose someone you loved. Though Ember had never lost anyone she cared for fortunately, she knew both of her parents had lost parents of their own. Briar still thought back wistfully on her own mother, and Astoria's... well, it didn't seem like her father had ever gotten over his mother's death. She didn't fully understand all of the details that surrounded her adoptive grandmother's passing, but what she had gathered, it hadn't been very nice... and it was something her sire still carried a lot of grief and guilt around.

The stranger made mention of how Ember's father was a good man and that his mother was very proud of him. At first, the pup didn't catch the underlying meaning behind the woman's words—until she started to think on it some more and her brow furrowed in confusion. How did this stranger know her father and grandmother so well? Ember had just turned to ask the stranger that very question when she felt herself being scuffed gently, letting out a soft gasp of surprise as her legs were hoisted off the ground. The next few moments passed in a blur of motion. They were sprinting across the rocky terrain, Ember held aloft by the stranger as she leapt athletically from boulder to boulder, drawing giggles of excitement from the young Carpathian princess. As she was set down on the smooth stone plateau, Ember was all smiles and giggles, settling in between the kind stranger's thick forelegs as they relaxed on the rocky shelf to overlook the autumnal valley below.

"Wow...!" exclaimed an awed Ember looking out over the vast mountain range. So all of this land belonged to the Carpathians? Then how come she had never been here before? Why had her parents never taken her or her littermates here? And why did they live in the castle so far away? That was when the truth was revealed. Another nuzzle from the stranger, a promise that after she had lived a full life that she could come spend the rest of eternity here—and that she'd be glad to have them join her. Big blue eyes snapped up with a quick turn of the girl's head to meet the glowing golden eyes of her grandmother, realization brightening in their depths and a slow wag beginning in her tail that gradually built up. "...Grandma?" asked Ember with trepidation and hope in her sweet voice, unable to hide the smile growing on her tiny snout. "Grandma Resin?"

"Ember"