how are things back home

[Fire]

your letters indicate
a broken place
that you call home

The scent of the pack was so close now that it was beginning to make Pitt slightly nervous. So far, he'd only spoken to a few loners. The general consensus was that both packs were on the verge of war, and tensions were running high. It was completely feasible that there were no original members of the pack that knew Pitt any more, and he could be mistaken for an enemy. The thought of travelling all this way only to find that his family weren't here (or worse: dead, but Pitt didn't want to consider this possibility just yet) was too painful.

A winter wind picked up; the breeze a welcome relief to his fretting. Somehow it helped to calm his mind a little. Of course they wouldn't mistake him for a Moon. He didn't stink of either pack, and surely in the middle of a battle they'd be grateful for the extra help? Not that Pitt was much of a fighter. Nor too fast a runner. Nor, well...Pitt wasn't much of an anything, actually. But he'd survived two years on his own, and that had to count for something, right?

Maybe not.

Reaching the top of the cliff, he decided to take a break. He considered howling but he knew that whatever attention that brought would also bring finality. Either his family were here, or they weren't. They were alive, or they weren't. Pitt thought he could use a rest before he received that kind of news.

dark times won't last forever
there's a brighter place
I know its real, I've been there with you

[Paint]

It now seemed like an age since Caden had been dragged howling and screaming through these lands. Such a change winter brought with its snow, even just visually, that Es sometimes wondered if the whole sorry affair was some sort of dream. She, like many others, was simply waiting for the call. She'd promised herself, in the memory of her late mother, that she would be there for this pack. Once this battle was done though, she knew she would opt out. No Man's Land, and solitude, called to her. So she found herself again seeking her own company in the frozen emptiness of the middle lands.

She'd learned the scents now of this land. An expert, you might say, at picking up the opposite pack scents, and even the occasional loner she now recognised. So when she crossed a path of scent left in pawprints in the snow that brought back a wave of nostalgia she stopped short. The snow caught and clung in soft round lumps on her tawny underbelly as she tried to remember. Justyn, perhaps? It was so familiar. But it didn't stink of Moons either. Would he have wandered far and long enough to lose the scent of his pack? She frowned, and curiously followed it, all the while her memory flitting back to a time of happiness, curled up at her mother's belly with her siblings.

Now, Esmerelda had long since given up hope of finding family again. Bandit was distantly related, this she knew, and of course she had her own pups. But apart from Justyn... It had been too long now. She had given up hope.

This was why when Es followed the scent to the Cliffside, admiring at first the beauty of the frozen waterfall, she paused as the wind changed and the scent hit her full in the face. From where she stood she could not see the wolf who carried it, and so she slowly began to climb the cliff, careful to pick her spots carefully. The cliffside was icy and packed with snow on all of the usual footholds. She slipped a little, dug in her claws, her whole body tensed. Then she willed herself onwards, nipping up the last few steps until she was over the lip.

At first she did not recognise him. She simply looked at him, a reminder of her past life, as if he could be anyone. Hell, he could've been Xaka. Caerwyn. Justyn. They all looked so damned similar. Her jade eyes widened and she simply stared for a minute at what seemed like a ghost of her past.