DotW - Breathe

---

“I’m nursing a child here. You get out there and hunt!”

Oruz had rolled his eyes, infuriating the grey she wolf, who surged at him, nostrils flaring and teeth flashing. “NOW!” She screeched, chasing the white male out of their temporary home and into the cold bright light outside. She could hear him huffing and muttering as he padded away, and she glared after him, her breath making white clouds from her jaw. Oruz was looking much healthier than he had been before, but he was getting lazy and entitled, being far too used to having Ranna do the hard work for him. But she was tired, and she needed to rest. She needed to be strong for Mosrael. To pass strength and breathe life into her one remaining child.

As the ghostly male disappeared grumpily into the distance, the sound of footfalls behind her made her ears swivel. She turned her head, muddied red eyes finding the dark, unforgiving brown of the brute Hidde. Ranna was initially pleased to see his face again, although she could not fathom why he would have returned - he had stumbled across her makeshift den only weeks before and been surprised to see her with a pup. Or at least, she thought he was surprised, given that he did little more than raise an eyebrow. He was not a wolf of many expressions. The small smile that had played on her lips faded quickly as her eyes travelled down to the limp little bundle in his jaw.

A cold shiver rushed down her spine. Her gaze did not leave the bundle, trying to figure out if it was even still breathing. Her mind raced, reminded all too suddenly of the stillborn Astarael, the child that had never even begun to live. Why was Hidde here with death in his fangs? Her lips pulled up to show teeth, and she took one or two tentative steps backward, as if protecting her little den. She knew Hidde, and perhaps that gave her all the more reason to be wary. She had seen what those fangs were capable of, and she did not know what he hoped to gain.

“What is this?” She hissed.

“A pup,” The brute had said through an expressionless face. “It’s mother is dead.”

The explanation he offered was about as useless and unhelpful as she had come to expect from males as a whole. From her experience, they either used many words to say nothing of consequence, or hardly any words to provide barely a haphazard skeleton of the matter at hand. Had she not been so fixated on the bundle that he carefully placed between his paws she would have rolled her eyes, and sarcastically snapped back at him with her usual venom. State the goddamn obvious. But luckily for Hidde, her attention was wholly and completely diverted by the puppy.

Through narrowed eyes she watched it, saw it taking laboured breaths in near silence. So it was alive… barely... but it’s mother wasn’t. What a peculiar parallel, what a strange changing of the tides. Ranna still yet mourned the loss of her stillborn and Hidde arrived with another, a new one, something to fill the void. The missing piece of the puzzle, perhaps not quite the same size or shape as the one that came before, but a piece that would still fit in the space that had been left behind.

Ranna huffed, mostly to herself, warring with her own thoughts. She didn’t want to replace the child she had lost. She wanted to remember Astarael to the end of her days, wanted to remember what evil she was truly capable of. But at the same time, she didn’t know if she could turn this helpless pup away as easily as she might have done once before. Even now she felt the urge to move forward and take it into her embrace before it joined Astarael in the skies.

Finally her eyes broke away and searched Hidde’s expressionless face for answers. “You’d better open that pretty mouth of yours and start talking Hidde,” She growled at him, showing teeth and little care for his preference to use as few words as possible. He could not simply march up to her with a half dead pup in his jaws and expect her to welcome him like a lover come back from the war. Ranna did not believe in fate, so she needed to know why.

He told her everything, eventually, though the delicate act of getting the answers was like pushing blood out of stone. She came to learn that this was Alar’s child - and therefore, her own sister. At first the thought repulsed her. But her eyes landed once more on the tiny form, shivering on the snowy ground, and she realised that this was her moment to change. She had not saved her daughter. She had not saved Shenandoah. She had barely saved herself. But she could preserve the life of this little one, her own flesh, her sister.

“What is her name?”

Hidde paused for a moment.

“Claire.”

---

I'M VERY FAR BEHIND. This is set back in Winter - Hidde arrives with a tiny pup in his jaws and asks Ranna to take care of it. He tells her everything, including who fathered the pup - but discreetly neglects to mention who was responsible for the death of it's mother. The pain of Astarael still raw, Ranna agrees to take Claire.

Literature: 850 words