It burned in his chest.

Inhale—like fire pouring into his lungs, followed by winter itself, causing him to cough. Every. Time. He spat something out, a glob of wetness he didn't dare look at, for he was sure there'd be dark stains in the pallid moonlight. Everything was grayed out in the night. The red would seem black, but he chose not to look at it, for he had seen it enough times already.

Not that he could quite claim to be coherent enough to say it was an informed decision.

Up until now, he had aged with grace and strength intact—he had been sturdy, his health had been mostly robust, and the ache in his joints not so bad, unless he'd slept too long on the cold ground without the added insulation of a little nest. He had been much the same as ever, maybe he'd slept more, maybe he'd needed more food but had a lesser appetite, maybe there were those gray, coarse hairs all over his silver face and up his broad legs, and some of his teeth had begun to hurt a little, and he needed more of a warm-up before exerting himself or he'd pull a muscle, or sprain something, but despite all of this, he had been a wolf still in his prime, where experience made up for physical faults.

Now, though, he wasn't even sure who he was. He shivered and panted his way through the days. His chest grated each time he breathed, and ached in that weird, not-quite-real way, as if his heart itself hurt. He spat up wads of phlegm and blood. He could barely hunt, and had lived on what he could scavenge.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Those were just the raw, hard facts, the observations one could make when viewing what had become a rather pitiable excuse of an aging, ill wolf.

The worst of it was his mind.

It wasn't so much something he was aware of, except for fleeting moments when it struck him that something was off, moments of lucidity in which he knew he was in the wrong place, and that he was more or less walking in circles in an unfamiliar north he did not know. But between those.. he walked and he walked and he walked, desperately trying to get to Swift River, because he had to get home. Because something had happened. To Kisla. To everyone. He had to get home, and tell Corinna and Indru that she was missing, that she had been taken over the mountains, that—no wait, she wasn't taken over the mountains, she was.. she was...

He stopped, out of breath just from walking, bent his head and hacked out a few more painful coughs. The frost had begun to come in the cold morning hours, and he should rest, because when it got that cold he needed to be up, to walk, but if he folded in on himself now he'd never get home, and he needed to tell them—

Tell them something—

Ice looked around himself, at the strange, forest-free landscape bathed in the silver light of a thousand distant stars. Where the hell am I?

The frost seared his lungs. Ice blinked in the pale light, trying to decipher what he was seeing—where he was standing. The horizon was unfamiliar, yet reminiscent of both his birthland and Red Salmon Cove. A.. tundra, of sorts, but largely unfamiliar. The gentle slopes and rolling hills, the rocky outcrops, were all like strangers to him, and as he cast about in the night, he.. was that the distant back of a mountain range? Wasn't he supposed to follow one, to somewhere? The breath rattled in his lungs as he turned towards it, his fevered gaze glued to it. Yes, mountains! Something about mountains...

“Ice,” someone said, much too close for comfort. The old wolf blinked, his gaze sweeping the surroundings again. She stood there, silver in the moonlight, her green eyes muted to murky gray, and he wondered how he hadn't seen her before. Perhaps he had thought her a ghost, or another rock, but she had definitely spoken. He coughed again. His sense of smell was dead, but she looked like home. Slowly, on burning limbs and aching paws, Ice drifted a little closer to her.

Yes, she was definitely from Swift River.. the loyal sister of the loyal Cali (something in his mind told him that there was something about Cali as well; was she missing? was everyone missing?). Jessie. A good, good friend, she had been there with them when they'd found Rissa, and when they'd gone over the mountains to found—wait, that wasn't right.. they couldn't have made a new pack, they were situated in Swift River still. Right? They had to still be at the River. "Jessie," he said, her name like a death-rattle from his lungs. He stopped thinking, he stopped caring, relief melting the tension from his bones and spreading some kind of childish bliss across his face. "I got lost, I—I don't seem to be able to find my way back to the River," his voice still a hoarse mess and broken up by coughs, and the always-so-sure wolf didn't even seem to notice how out of place it was for him to be lost. "Is it near? There's something—about Kisla—" He frowned. He kept thinking she was dead, that it was her they had found, but that wasn't it, was it..?

"Is she dead?" he asked uncertainly, deeply, deeply disturbed, and suddenly afraid.

What is happening to me?

He remembered something, then—something Treyah had said a long time ago, when the world had been full of sunshine and the only clouds whatever had passed between him and Kisla. There had been regrets, of various kinds, feelings of being not quite enough, and the haunting notion that he should go visit Fenru and Arlette. But more than that, he was happy to be home, with Serach, Aponi, and the young. Treyah had come like an unwanted lightning strike, setting some things on fire, but not much more than that. He'd been worried about Triell for a while after it, but what she'd said about her mother came back to him then.

It's like she time travels or something, Treyah said in his memories. His breath rattled in his lungs and throat; the jutting spine of the mountain against the cold, starry sky was ominous. Two lives, one on each side. Forever and always tramontane, beyond the mountains. Was that how it was always going to be? He coughed, wishing he could dislodge the fear from his body with the movement, but it only burned his throat and made him quiver.

“Yes…Kisla is gone,” Jessie replied, and Ice struggled to not respond with a who?, for he was suddenly certain that whoever Kisla was, they'd just been talking about her. He closed his eyes, and leaned against the smaller wolf for comfort and warmth; Ice was thin beneath his ragged and thick fur. Kisla; ah, yes, Kisla. She was gone? But she was just a child! Had she gone missing during play?

Pups die when they go missing.

"We have to find her," he croaked in protest to Jessie's firm command that he come home with her, although, it sounded.. so good.. to get to go home again. Surely Kisla would be fine a few hours longer? She was almost a yearling, after all, with a thick Tainn winter coat, and a sensible head on her shoulders. Besides, she wasn't as brave and boisterous as Rihael or Rissa, so she'd probably be fine, unless that was why she was gone.. Ice groaned, but it was more like a wheeze. "I've been lost so long," he whispered in the winter darkness, the whites showing around his silver eyes.

Had he been more at his senses, he would've been terrified.

The dark clouds roiling in his mind, disjointed memories like lightning flashes—there and gone again. The tundra of his birthplace, the fear he'd grown up with for things he was not responsible for.. things he had not thought of in a long time had haunted him, until he'd lost all sense of time and space. He lived in whatever moment came to the forefront of his mind, be it of his childhood, Swift River, or Oak Tree Bend.

His incapability of holding on to the now, and his sense of self, was what would've scared him, had he been in any position to have a notion of it.

”Kisla is dead, Ice.” Oh. I knew that. Didn't I? It all turned into a blur of things associated with Kisla, from roaring rivers to a spring night by a lake, to her crying daughter and everything in between. His body rattled with another cough, and he began to lower his head; not dangerously so, but as if suddenly aware of how weary he was.

It's been so long.. but he didn't know what had been so long, the thought lost in the whirl of other thoughts. ”I’ve found you now and...you need to see a healer. Please?” Jessie's voice was tinged with something he normally did not recognize in her—urgency, fear almost. What for? For.. him? He felt the cold air burn in his lungs. Maybe she was right. Maybe he shouldn't be out here, under cold stars. His cloudy eyes found hers. "Oh.. okay," he said, but he didn't move. He didn't know where to go.

Jessie's muzzle under his chin felt.. good, familiar, warm, like a thousand memories blurred into one, but here, now. Briefly, Ice's eyes closed, and he inhaled the mixture of searingly cold air and Jessie's scent. It was so much like what he remembered, and yet, so different.. slowly, his silver eyes opened again, and he blinked in the pale starlight.

Star light, star bright... The familiar words rolled over in his mind, tumbled around each other, and for a moment, he wondered what it would be like, to join them. To drift up.. all the way up into the dark abyss...

"Right," he mumbled in response to Jessie, heaving himself up on four aching paws, four aching legs; his thin shoulders jutted skywards underneath his thin, matted fur. He shook with another cough, blinked, wondering where they would be going, ready to follow her somewhere. Blind trust built upon years of memories.