Hunger. It has become her friend, her brother-in-arms, her comrade on lonely, starlit nights with the harsh, relentless wind biting deep, through fur and into bone, flesh, heart, mind and soul: the wind and the hunger, a slow leeching of strength. Of purpose, direction, and courage. Her breath rattled through cold lungs and empty ribs, just another mark of the emptiness swelling within her—bleak, black and dismal it seemed to encompass both mind and body. It was a long time since she'd known heat, since she'd known meat, and the lethargy was like dusk, a clouded sunset which took everything of life and light and thoughts with it, stranding her in a desolate darkness which knew only pain.
Because Cézanne ached, everywhere. Her paws were worn, her bones were worn, cold gripping aging joints with a fervor, dulling her. She felt like the last flickers of a flame, straining for the sky and the glory of a pyre, a bonfire, but even the merest hushed whisper of a breath threatened to put her out. The emptiness in her gut was a monster eating her up—ironic.
A harsh, weathered smile, a wicked grin, stretched across her maw for a moment as she kept slinking through the shadows. She appreciated irony, though she appreciated it more when she wasn't at the receiving end; Cézanne had been tough even before she left to find her damned brother, and had faced hardship with her pack before, but she was not enough of a spoiled fool to deny that some things had been.. easier, then. They had been many. They had been many to feed, and many to hunt; she was alone. She was alone, and cold, and hungry.

The moon was out.
It was glorious, if she but had the mind for it; silver rays of light filtering down through barren branches, licking the edges of the world—argentum her mind whispered through the hunger-apathy. Argentum. Dull eyes, grayed out in the moonlight, blinked in the darkness, paws whispering over the cold-crusted ground. Her breath rose in front of her face.
» Argentum. «
A hush, a lull, the wind swirling around her and the trees as if to ask itself, what is this silver of which she speaks? Cézanne blinked again. The night was cold and clear and sharp, wrapped around her, mocking her—what had she done all winter but starve and stare at stars and sun like some lost, idiot lamb? When had she lost herself to the throes of hunger and chill?
No more, no more. Let the flame of her blood be the warmth—the only warmth she had.

» Argentum! « she shouted into the darkness.
Ego sum viva.