Don't Blink

Though she'd just returned and had a lot of catching up to do with her brothers, the first thing she did once Regulus had allowed her back into Celestial was to excuse herself and coax her tired limbs back into that mile-eating lope wolves do so well, pointing herself unerringly in the direction of the cave system that had always been the focal point of the pack. She'd been told her mother had been holed up here for quite a while, and after seeing the toll age had suddenly taken on her father Justice had been taken by the compulsion to see if the same frightening change had taken over her mother.

She slipped easily into the den system, but her mother's scent was faint at the entrance, prompting a frown on the little bear's muzzle. She ventured deeper into the dens, and then deeper still, until finally her mother's scent was more than just a faint lure leading her further in. The scent... wasn't quite right, wasn't how she remembered it. There was a faint feeling of not-quite-sickness that lingered in the scent that shouldn't have been there. "Mum?" she called out softly, sticking her head in the far-back den's entrance. Seeing her mother's form, curled there, she stopped there, waiting to be invited in. "Mum, it's me, Justice. I'm home."