Moms make everything better

Ember was a great big ball of conflicted feelings. Her adolescent months had been a tumultuous time for her trying to navigate the choppy waters of emotional changes, friction between the beliefs and ideals of herself and her father, and the blossoming new world of romances and relationships she was being thrust into rather unceremoniously. With all the changes that came with growing up, Ember had never felt more unstable than she did now. Someday she might look back at herself during this time and realize that instability often came with great changes, but living in the moment, it just felt uncomfortable and she hated it. She couldn't talk to her father without starting some sort of an argument (and she was still pretty miffed at him too), she'd already talked to her grandmother about some of her problems and gotten Tamsyn's sage advice on the subjects, but there was still one wolf in the Hallows she really wanted to talk to—the one wolf she knew she could always turn to when she needed to help set her head and her heart straight.

Following her mother's scent through the halls of Hearthstone, Ember tracked Briar down to the wine cellars beneath the castle. Her mother must have been casking some new wines or doing some management of their stocks or something. To be honest, she didn't know much about her mother's work with the Hallows' wine production, but she had always been curious ever since their culinary lesson together. She knew coming down into the wine cellars was off limits to them as younglings, but she was practically an adult by now. She was certainly facing adult issues at the very least... "Mom?" Ember called out as she descended the staircase from the kitchen into the cellars, peeking around the rows of wine racks and massive casks and barrels. "Mom, are you down here?"

"Ember"