Whisper Marsh pre-chorus

AW! Though special tag for @Kalysta since he is out looking for her
Noon, Scattered Clouds, 52F/11C

The father had become dedicated full time to bringing Kalysta home safe. He had spent a lot of time looking for Atlas of course, but this had a more desperate tone to it knowing how quickly things could go wrong for a child her age, especially given her blindness. He was barely sleeping, his subconscious plagued with nightmares of the night he had found out that Sephrina had died. The sight of her body being delivered by the Cove wolves and the burial that followed.

He wouldn’t let it happen again. He would move heaven and earth before he had to bury any more of his children. So here he was, retracing steps it felt like he had already crossed a hundred times in the last three weeks, frantic for any sign of her. A ghost of a scent, a paw print, a few stray salt and pepper hairs that might show that she had been here at any point. Every day he picked a new direction and walked until his paw pads had become cracked and raw, yellow eyes sweeping back and forth systematically, nose to the ground and then the air and then repeat.

He would find her. The air during the day was still nice enough, but the nights were beginning to dip close to freezing point, and once this week he had returned to the territory to find a light frost clinging to the grass. This was not the time for a child to be out alone.

Kalysta hadn't intended to travel so far, but she'd gotten a little lost. She didn't think her cousin would disappear like that. She'd been (mostly) minding her own business when she heard Jacy pass by, and it seemed so unfair that he could so easily leave the territory while she was trapped there, so she followed him. She intentionally hung back, but it turned out she let him get too far ahead of her, because when she slowed down to focus more on placing her feet he vanished. Now she was stuck away from home and didn't even know which direction she'd come from.

Kal thought she could find it. She walked in what she thought was the right direction based on which direction the faint shadows leaned, but in the end she thought she must be walking in circles. After that she walked aimlessly. Or spent days resting, or trying to sneak up on weird smells, or playing in the river when she came across it. She was careful to avoid fast-moving water which was fortunately loud enough to warn her away. She was really having fun, learning to navigate a strange world and what different things smelled and sounded like, but she was really starting to get hungry. She'd found some carrion a couple times but that rarely lasted her more than a day or two and she wanted to keep moving. Kalysta did want to make it home, after all, and the hungrier she got the more homesick she got. She even found herself missing her dad.

As if by some miracle the salt and pepper wolf’s searching finally came with results. And not just a sign of Kalysta, but his daughter herself in the flesh and by astonished glance she appeared to be no worse for wear. A little disheveled and a little skinnier than when she had left maybe, but not physically harmed or ill. The man let out a sharp gasp in surprise as soon as he spotted her there in the marsh. How many times had he looked here and all the surrounding territories, just for her to appear?

He was running before he even had time to process, ”Kalysta?” her name desperate on his lips. He covered the ground between them in leaps and bounds, his paws sloshing unnoticed into the moist ground below. Cattails whipped against his skin, but he never slowed, not until he was standing just before her. He took a moment to make sure that she was real and not some kind of mirage or fantasy, then he moved to pull her into a tight embrace. He whispered, ”I was so worried, when Atlas came home but you hadn’t I thought something terrible happened.” But it hadn’t, she was here.