Sex: FemaleWith permission of Iopah, Silentium left to search for Pacem who he thinks is still missing.
Iopah watched @Silentium leave. He didn't look back and she didn't look away. Silence reigned, but the conversation was far from forgotten. All their words were spent and used, recordings that were indelibly etched into her memory. Everything that had not been said -the shared silences and gazes they couldn't hold- had spoken just as loudly. She had helped raise him and he had followed her over the mountain, of course they would understand each other now. It was the understanding that made it hurt more. There was nothing more that could be done. It had to be this way, heartbreaking as it was to her.
The foliage swallowed up the blonde of his coat and she kept listening, gaze still fixed in his direction. How could she have refused him? He had left everything -everything!- because he cared for her. What kind of monster would she be to refuse him? The crash of the distant Secret Falls rose over the receding sound of his footfalls. Iopah stretched high on her toes, suddenly desperate. Silentium had called her his family once and he was the closest thing she had to a son.
And she had to let him leave.
No matter how high she stretched and how long she held her breath, there was nothing to be seen or heard. Her breath came out in a heaved exhale and she sank back down like a puppet with its strings severed in slow motion. Just like that, he was gone. Her breath came and went in another heave. She hoped that he was careful, that he remembered his way and a dozen other things she had pleaded for. He just wanted to find his brother -and she understood that- but she worried so much for him.
The woman turned her feet in the opposite direction and started for home. The pack needed to know what happened and she needed to see them all. Everything was heavy in her mind and her pace was slow. Her daughters wouldn't understand, a part of her suspected Bracken thought he was an older brother. It was a mess that worsened the farther she walked and longer she thought. There was no way to tell @Nina. Iopah couldn't just cross the mountain and approach an enemy pack, not when so many had disappeared or left already. There was no way to predict how this would turn out, but it sure sucked right now.