When everything is wrong

Crux would not go far, he made sure to remain within view of the grove but some part of him couldn't help but feel like he wanted to just stand on that bridge, it was the thing that connected the place that was home to here, to a place that didn't feel any less welcoming but didn't breathe with the ghosts of his mother... Home... How much would it hurt to return there and find his mother wasn't waiting for him in the den anymore? Some part of him ached to return to the col, to find the familiarity of those mountains... And another part of himself that never wanted to risk his memories of that place being tarnished by the grief of a missing part of it.

Crux wasn't exactly doing... Well, amazing. He wasn't crying all the time... Anymore. But he was still young enough that he didn't know how to process the grief he was dealing with and didn't even know if he could have vocalized it properly. All he wanted was to be able to snuggle up to his mother and tell her how much he was hurting... And the pain was he couldn't even do that anymore. The boy peered out across the land bridge, steel blue gaze unflinching as he imagined the world that was out there... Some part of him imagined he might find his mother out there, even as he knew he never would.

Speech