A Long Time Coming

[Cascade]

He had seldom spent time here. The tombs were not outwardly frightening, nor was he particularly bothered by what they contained, but Kanut was plagued by disconcerting thoughts whenever he got too close. Maybe it was that, although Eternal Snowfall was the only pack he had ever known, he had no blood ties to the wolves entombed within. In a pack with such impressive lineage, he was an outsider as far back as he could tell. Maybe it was because Rhiannon vanished over two years ago and not a trace of her had yet been found. So close was she to finding her purpose in life, and so close was he to finding his purpose in her, only for it all to be taken away in the time it took him to rise from a single night's sleep.

It would have been easier if she had been killed before his eyes. Run through by a boar or trampled during a hunt. The pain would have been unreal, but he would have felt it all at once. It was the not knowing, the constant cycles of hope and terror and despair, and never getting to properly grieve for fear of not ever being able to forgive himself for giving up on her. The few times that he had tried to come here and remember her, he couldn't feel a bit of peace in the face of these unknown souls. Always having to choose between the guilt of throwing his life away with foolish hope, and the guilt of daring to turn his back on her in an attempt at happiness. There was never any closure. Rhiannon had no tomb.

Kanut's eyes peered across the meadow, where he could just barely make out the dens in the distance. Moonflower was his mate in title, but hardly in deed. Not at all in his heart. He didn't know how she would react when she found out about him, maybe shocked? Maybe disappointed. He knew that he had two daughters, but struggled to remember their names. How old were they? Long ago, he had been proud to call himself a good wolf, but how could he truthfully say now that he was good? He was a poor father—an absent father. Certainly a poor mate. How old was Moonflower? Hopefully not too old to move on from all he had put her through and start anew. Kanut couldn't decide whether his greatest shame was becoming the empty shell he was right up until the end, or whether it was dragging that innocent girl down with him. When it was at its worst, when he was certain that every bleached bone he saw belonged to her, he would hide himself away in his den for weeks on end. It must have been torture for her, to have loved a wolf so deeply and never to have been truly loved back, and to then have to watch him waste away in a dirty hole in his own mess.

Kanut felt none of that now. His fur, or the appearance of it, was clean as though it had never been touched by dirt. He didn't feel the hunger or the ache of his joints or the stinging pain of his rotting tooth. For two years he had been incomplete in heart and soul, and now he had a body to match. Resting his head on his paws, he curled up tighter at the base of the largest stone tomb and waited, wondering what Piala would think when she inevitably discovered him there. It had been three days since he had wandered off the territory and into the mountains; his absence would have surely been noted. The stones would have felt cold against his flesh, if he could feel such things as cold anymore. Rhiannon did not have tomb. He would not have a tomb either.

[forte]

A gray sky hung over Piala as she traversed her territory, making scent marks here and there. The gradual disappearance of her packmates, one by one, over the past year weighed heavy on her absent mind. She had no idea how it had happened and it was driving her mad. Eternal Snowfall had long been one of the most prominent packs in the Valley, but all that was gone now. Everyone was gone. Even Kanut, who had managed to stay around up until three days ago. She grieved for her lost friends and followers and for the end of the pack she had worked so hard to keep alive and thriving. Even if she were to rebuild the pack, it would never be quite the same.

After a while the alphess—could she even call herself that, with no pack to lead?—found herself at the tombs. She wanted to feel peaceful just by being here, as she normally did, but she didn't this time. This quiet place for introspection and remembrance only served to remind her that there was no one around to help her. The wolves whose bones rested in the ground below her, wolves she had known and loved, were dead. They could not help her find her missing pack members or find new ones. They couldn't help rebuild Eternal Snowfall. If Piala were to die, no one would be left to remember her once-great pack and the deeds of its individuals.

Still, she walked through the tombs. Why? Maybe habit; the tombs were the first place she went when she felt unhappy or just needed to think. Or maybe she felt like she belonged here as much as any of them.

After a few minutes of walking through the eerie forest of stones, a weird shimmer caught her eye. She couldn't quite make out what it was—a distant pool? A patch of unmelted snow? Nothing she could think of quite matched what she saw, and yet she felt the vision was familiar, and she could sense something was odd here. The while she-wolf walked slowly and quietly toward it, her head turning from side to side as she tried to determine exactly what she was looking at. Then she stopped short, having recognized what she now could tell was the shape of a wolf. "Kanut?" she asked loudly, with shock in her voice. "Is that you?"

[Cascade]

He heard her before he saw her, having fallen into a sort of trance as immeasurable minutes passed. He didn't experience time like he did before, as though he were stuck in an entirely different dimension parallel to the living realm. He didn't know whether this feeling would be permanent. In fact, he didn't know anything about what had happened to him. He had seen ghosts before, when he was alive, known that they existed, but for whatever reason he never prepared for the possibility that he would share that fate. The only thing he knew was that it wasn't a choice. All he had wanted in the world was to disappear into comfortable and numbing void, but evidently he had failed even at that. What cruelty. What unimaginable cruelty.

His name was so warped coming from a mortal's lips that at first he recognized neither it nor her. Slowly the wolf came into focus, though, and Kanut realized that it was his alphess who had discovered him laying there. Then again, was she really his alphess anymore? Could he belong to any pack, even if he felt that he deserved to? She asked if it was him and the words took a moment to register. Looking up at her in silence, he paused just to consider it. "Yes," he finally said, surprised at the normalcy of his own voice, "At least, what's left."

It was impossible to know what Piala would think of him. But he supposed that even if she hated him, cursed and spat at his transient form and drove him from the lands, it would be the same as if she broke into tears of sadness. Either way, some time would pass and she would die, and he would still be here. His existence stretched off into eternity now; the only inevitability was that he would forget her. Whether it took one hundred years meant nothing at this point because time meant nothing. There just...was. Hopefully, eternity would be enough to forget it all.

[forte]

Piala stood rigid as the spectral form of Kanut slowly met her eyes. His gaze was hollow and haunting. Ghosts were something the she-wolf hadn't encountered much before, and to see someone she had known so closely in such a state made her legs feel like water. The difference in him was both obvious and difficult to wrap her head around. He looked as if he were only partly there—not transparent, exactly, but as if he were a hallucination. The she-wolf blinked a few times to make sure he wasn't.

Then the ghost spoke, and his voice, while familiar, had the same half-there quality as his appearance, and seemed to come from all around her. At his words, Piala closed her eyes tightly and shook her head. This couldn't be happening. To lose her whole pack and then to have it thrown in her face like this was beyond traumatic. "No, no..." She began to pace back and forth, still shaking her head as if plagued by voices. After a moment she turned to him. "How did this happen?" she demanded, her voice practically a growl. She had reached the point where sadness was not a sufficient reaction to express her grief. Now anger flooded the she-wolf. This world had thrown everything she had ever worked for away, and offered no explanation. Kanut might be able to help her figure out what had happened to everyone else.

[Cascade]

It would have easily saddened him, even in at his worst, to see Piala so deeply hurt by his death. It wasn't his intention, but a particularly nasty side effect. But he had to do it. Even if he did not deserve a tomb here, he could not bring himself to disappear as Rhiannon had done. He had long since rationalized that it was impossible for anyone in his pack to care for him as deeply as he had cared for her, but subjecting anyone else to even a fraction of the pain and uncertainty that had driven him down this path was, in the end, too much for him to bear. Although it would hurt them all, that's why he had returned, to bring them closure.

"How did this happen?" The answer stuck in his throat. The sensation of it was surprisingly physical, more than anything else he had yet experienced in this form. His tail drooped, and although his spectral form was not the emaciated thing he had become in his final weeks, Kanut looked smaller than ever as he shrunk from Piala's question. After many moments, the best he could manage was a sorrowful and yearning, "I'm sorry."

[forte]

With a jaw clenched in anguish, Piala once again turned away from Kanut as his words, while ambiguous, confirmed her suspicions. She knew that, while he had gone through the motions with Moonflower, he had never recovered from the disappearance of Rhiannon, and that not knowing what had happened to her was far more painful than Kanut than for the rest of the pack. Perhaps it was better that he didn't come out and say what had happened; this way, she could continue to lie to herself. She could tell herself that he had been killed by a mountain lion or maybe by Frigid Plague. In any case, she knew better than to ask about his body. While she would have wanted him to have a burial, Piala had the feeling that he wouldn't want one.

She took a deep breath to gather up some words. "Are...are you going to...stay around here?" The alphess's voice wavered almost imperceptibly as she asked the question. Was she insane for hoping the answer would be yes, for wanting the company of a ghost? Though she knew if she wanted to get other wolves to join the pack Kanut wouldn't be able to stay, for the time being she couldn't stand the thought of being alone again.

[Cascade]

Kanut noted how strong Piala was. How capable she was at controlling her emotions, but even with her best effort he could see that she was hurting. An impulse to lie bubbled within him. He could tell her that it had been an accident and maybe it would spare her some of this pain. Then again, what was his purpose here if not to bring them the truth?

She questioned whether he intended to stay, and he honestly couldn't tell what she was hoping he would say. Did she not want to lose him forever? Or did she want him to leave and spare them from his haunting presence? He wanted to respect her wishes, but he wasn't even sure what his own wishes were. In the back of his mind he thought of wandering the valley and perhaps, by chance, finding Rhiannon's spirit. He had all the time in the world now. More time than her natural lifespan, even if she was still alive at that moment. Was it an inevitability? He didn't know anything about ghosts or what caused a wolf to become one. Unfinished business? That would definitely apply to him...and surely Rhiannon, right? She would not allow herself to slip into nothingness knowing that he never would have known what happened to her could she?

It hurt. He had done what he did to rid himself of this pain, but there was no end to it now. He shook his head, as if to shake the painful thoughts from his mind, still unable to look Piala in the eye. "I...don't know. I didn't think this would happen to me. I have no idea what to do now."