you do not know who is your friend or who is your enemy until the ICE breaks. Finally they were shaken out of their compliant silent. Inside, Ice felt like trembling, knowing that their minds would be spoken, that truth, whether he wanted to hear it or not, would come tumbling from their lips. He felt like holding his breath, to make sure he wouldn't miss a thing, and took comfort in the gray shoulder pressed against his, and Fenru sitting so close by. If they had some issues.. some problems.. surely they could solve them? Surely they could talk, balance dominance and submission with the need for peace and comfort? Jessie's voice was the first, a word, so painful, followed by a sentence, and memories of Rissa... Dead ferns dusted thickly with snow, moonlight shining from a clear sky, a dead fox in the shadows and her body laid on display for all to see, broken and torn.. the cold, cold gleam of silver light against her bared skull and dried blood... Ice's eyes closed for a moment, hearing Kisla's agreement of moving, a new start for a new generation; a graveyard for the previous one... Memories, too, of a mass of wolves ripping into bodies black and white, spilling heathen blood on a foggy night with only the moon and each other for witnesses. He could understand the question.. he had seen Rissa, too, and knew her pain.. her doubts, after a fashion.
"The reason is mostly practical," he began in a hoarse voice, silver eyes opening, but he couldn't block out the pain. It swirled within his irises, in the set of his 'brows, flowed in the nuances of his voice. "This side of the pass is full of packs - there is nowhere to go." And they needed to go - he believed it, fiercely, for Corinna's sake, for his own, for Cali and Jessie, for Kisla and Fenru, for Aiyana.. for Tali, too. She didn't deserve to be haunted by a past she had no part in. "But don't worry," he continued, ears slicking back for a moment as his muzzle dipped lower. "We will not live in that forest.. nor on the mosses where we killed the bastards." Ice refused to; even when Rissa's corpse had decomposed to become one with the nature again, sure to happen now that the snow was thawing and winter ending, he would not set foot in that forest without remembering her torn face and sightless, bloodied eyes. "We will find some other place in the east to carve out our future.. to heal and grow." .ice aesir |