Time was short, and she was feeling the pressure of guilt weighing on her fully as much as the disease that was ravaging her. She'd spent so much of her time caring for Celestial, and so little mothering her children. Did they, perhaps, resent her for that lack? That she'd sacrificed her time with them for a pack that had done little to step up and prepare them for adulthood? She was concerned for how her eldest son seemed to view the world through a lens of cynicism and anger, but it was Geoffrey and Viviane who concerned her most of all. Her gentler children worried her, knowing she had and could do so little to prepare them for life without her to protect them. She'd never been anything of a healer, and that, she knew, was what they both had the most interest in. She had been tolerant of it, even encouraging, but she'd not been as insistent on getting them thoroughly trained as she should have been. With only one fully trained healer in the pack capable of teaching, she'd left it in his paws and given it little thought, until she'd realized that she'd put it off for far too long and trusted too much in the pack to take the initiative, and now it was too late to see them trained before she left them.

Resting beside the den, letting the weak winter sun soak her brittle fur and trying to get fresh air, she waited for night to come, and bring healer son home, so she could catch him away from his siblings and have a quiet word with him.

Even though he was thoroughly exhausted from the day's events Geoffrey somehow managed to drag himself home. It had been tempting to sleep beyond the wall, but he knew his mother would worry and he hated the thought of doing that to her. So inch by inch he'd made his way home. Honestly it felt like forever on legs made of jello, but he'd done it. The den was in sight.

And so to was his mother.

He'd never really paid attention to just how much older his mother was than the other grown ups. To him she'd always just been mom, but seeing her there in front of the den... He wasn't sure what to make of the mix of emotions that came over him as he looked at her.

Nonetheless his expression was as bright as ever as he walked up to her. "Hey mom."

The cold bite of the air irritated the liquid in her lungs, making each breath sharp and aching and causing her to breath shallowly to avoid the inevitable coughing fits as much as possible. Still, it was soothing to the fever she had been struggling with, so she stayed outside of the den anyway.

She opened faded blue eyes when she heard his voice, and smiled to see his expression. Her bright boy, her loving and intuitive Geoffrey. "Geoffrey," she rasped. She smiled invitingly towards him, and carefully pushed herself up to her haunches. "Will you sit with me? I'd like to talk to you. We've had so little chances to talk just the two of us."

His mother's failing health wasn't lost on him. Geoffrey knew something wasn't right but he couldn't figure out what, and he knew intuitively that it was something big. So he didn't look too closely at the problem. That's how problems worked, right? If you ignored them they eventually worked themselves out. It sounded good anyway.

"Yeah, sure!" he said as he moved to settle down beside his mother. Geoffrey was half tempted to wiggle closer so he could lean against her like he did when he was little, but didn't for fear of pushing her over. He was a little big for that now. "Whatcha wanna talk about?"