Dead Empress Backwater yeah, I know

For @Vanadis only, unless @Ally would also like to join. This thread immediately follows Viorel finding out about Archer's death.

Viorel felt as if the sunny weather was taunting him. Who knows how long it had been since he left Vanadis with their cubs, back when the weather had seemed to match his mood. Everything had been good, or at least on its way to being good. Now everything was bright, mockingly idyllic, while he could not possibly feel any lower. He was fighting it off, the seductive siren call of numbness, the easiness of feeling nothing rather than the way he felt everything. Like electric shocks running up his leg with every step.

How long had he been standing here silently in front of the den? He didn’t know how he was supposed to tell her that they had lost another child. That she had left him to care for them all and two of them died now and it was his fault for not protecting them better. He couldn’t get the words out, instead he just kept standing there, tears streaming down his face and splattering into the dirt. Dust splayed out around them, a ripple effect. Yellow eyes watched each one fall, each ocean that got soaked quickly into the dry earth as if it had never been there. Leaving behind a crater, empty and cold.

Empty and cold.

Ghost let me know if you would like me to change anything about the first paragraph

the night comes down like heaven

Ally had run and her grandfather had chased her, and even though she just wanted to hide... she realized she didn't actually want to be alone. Viorel would understand. He had to, to have chased after her like this. So when he went to deliver the awful news to her new grandma, Ally meekly followed, head hanging and tail dragging in the dirt. She cried as she walked, silent even as the tears dripped from the end of her nose. She didn't want to believe it...

Why hadn't her dad come home to her?

The worst part was that even as she tried to remember his voice, it was difficult. His face faded in and out of her memory. Even his smell was getting confused in her mind with that of her uncle and grandfather; they smelled so similar, and yet not close enough.

When grandfather stopped before the den Ally knew her grandmother waited in she stopped behind him, waiting without lifting her head.