Aris wasn't the most well trained healers - what she'd learned had mostly come from what Gossamer had done her best to teach her, mixed with the scrolls she was slowly gathering into a library from the trader-fox whose rounds she now eagerly awaited. She wasn't even particularly interested in helping most people - she was driven to healing out of the puzzle-solving aspect of it, really, and had always been way more interested in using it for less than kindly things. But for the people who were important to her, like really important, she was willing to do anything, delve deep into that admittedly shallow pocket of knowledge and come up with a win for them. She'd wanted so badly to be able to do that during the Long Night when everyone was so sick but she hadn't had the knowledge or the experience to be able to come up with a solution. The fact that no one else had been able to do anything about it either didn't make it easier, because she should have been the one to pull the answer out of the hat.

Now that the disease had run its course and the sun had driven away the last physical vestiges of it, that opportunity had gone. But she didn't need to be a trained healer to worry about how her mother was handling it, after everything else she'd already been through. She'd been both physically and emotionally fragile before she and Sirius and several of her children had gotten sick; that had to have been terrifying to her, for so many lives she cared about to be in danger of being lost and not being able to do anything about it. Her mom always had just cared so much more than Aris, and she had the scars from it too. It wasn't something she really thought about much in connection to healing, the mental and emotional aspect of it, but frankly she was a manipulative little bitch so she was aware of peoples' emotional states and she was pretty sure her mom was at risk of being really hurt by all she'd gone through, and Aris fucking hated the idea of her mom hurting.

So one morning not long after the sun had risen to warm the world and her father had already left to do alpha-y things, Aris had set out to get her mom alone and see how she was doing. The first place she looked was Zee and Sirius' den - not even necessarily because she thought she'd be there, but because it one place she'd be certain to be at some point in the day and it was still early, so it was a good starting point. Poking her head in, she called out softly, "Mom, are you in? Can we talk?"

Summer came and with it, the long night faded out of existence. The world moved ahead quickly in the absence of darkness and ooze; prey was beginning to rebound as were the predators, her children were growing up once more, and another one of her daughters had moved away. Injuries slowly healed, leaving some wolves looking like nothing had happened and others like they'd been through war. Zee had got off worse then most, but better then others. Scars tore across her torso to match the long-healed wound upon her neck, but no mushrooms upon her face had left marks as they fell away. It was more for her to hide, she supposed, but as long as Zee could maintain some semblance of pride she would survive. It was rare she ever shrugged off her king-cheetah pelt armor, for it hid not only the scars but the outline of her ribcage. The voice outside the door woke her from her thoughts, her toucan giving a croak of welcome. Aris' presence was always an appreciated surprise, especially now that Zee found herself short another daughter in company. "Of course." As a pup the small girl was always feisty, with an attitude complained about by family, pack members, and teachers alike. Zee was fond of her daughter's spirit and energy, as it reminded her of herself. Sirius had fallen in love with a back-talking, say-what-you-want slave, and while she had settled and displayed restraint with age, she could not fault her daughter for not yet learning those lessons. "What's on your mind, Ari?" Word Count: 730/1500 "Speech"