It felt fitting that the skies seemed barely able to hold back their own tears today. The pack had known little of joy or even simple distraction for the last week; @Kino, @Marianna, and even @Kova had gone to great lengths to separate themselves from the others following Minka's burial, @Gent had thrown himself into anything he could come up with that was both necessary and kept him away from the rest of the pack, and the rest had more or less each found their own hollows to hide away in. Truly, the rest of nature was just crass for not grinding to the same stop as the wolves of the Crest.

Calanthe felt herself to be taking this the worst out of the wolves who were not related to Minka and who had not known her for very long. Part of her mind was always quick to note that she had no right to this deep depression, that Minka wasn't hermother and hadn't been her Queen for more than a scant few months (and hadn't Calanthe been a loner for a longer time than she had been a member of the Crest pack? She couldn't remember anymore, and hardly had the energy to work back through the months she had lived here, through the months before Gent had found her, all the way back to the day she had first abandoned the Gambol.)

It wasn't fair to the others that Calanthe saw fit to drag herself about like this; her children had far more right to suffer than anyone else here. To that end, Calanthe had sluggishly come to the decision that she could best honor Minka by throwing herself back into her aborted work earning a Hunter's rank within the pack. Minka had been one of their best hunters, after all, and with her death they were one wolf less right on the cusp of the colder seasons. They needed at least one wolf who had no greater responsibility than to hunt for the pack.

Still... it was difficult to drag herself away from the little clearing she had taken to haunting during the day. When the sun shone, it was a relatively warm spot to rest (not that Calanthe ever felt warm nowadays, despite her best efforts to rectify the chill she hadn't been able to shake;) when it was cold and dark, it was the perfect backdrop for her daily round of self-deprecation and constant revisits of the night everything had gone wrong again.

Either way, this wasn't the spot to be; Gent may have imposed a temporary ban on leaving pack grounds, but there was still prey to be found within the shadow of the Crest. She might even find someone to hunt with as she wandered the territory... she only hoped that, if she did, they would be patient with her. Nothing short of being productive would distract her, and then only until the productivity came to an end.