Each step, away from the den where his parents now lay dead, felt like a steadily tightening noose around his neck. Steel didn't know how to live without them, and yet he knew he had no other choice. He had considered burying them, but he hadn't had the strength to return to their den. It was painful to know they lay there still, probably rotting away like carrion now, but he couldn't bring himself to return to the scene. He just couldn't revisit that scene again.
A sigh left his lips as the sea came into view. Though he wasn't ready to go to the mainland again, to find any of his siblings, he needed to move. The steady movement of his paws would keep his mind from staying still for long. He squinted his eyes against the bright summer sun as he trailed closer to the massive sand-bridge that he'd traveled on to make his way to this largely uninhabited continent. The sun cast a strange glow on the land, the sand seeming to sparkle a hundred different colors. For a long time he would walk, before coming to rest near the shoreline, eying the vast distance that separated this continent from the next, wondering what he ought to do next.
