8/1/2025, 5:42 PM
Sol's ear twisted toward the sound of approaching footfalls. At first, they sounded oddly far away, as if filtering to her cupped ears through murky waters or thick snowfall. It was the brisk, precise pacing of them and the accompanying buttery, smoky scent that Solulfur now knew so well that pulled her awareness more fully to her surroundings. The Black Sun shifted only minutely - a slight tilt to her skull, the lines of brooding tension in her expression smoothing away one by one. She didn't yet pull her gaze away from the abyssal maw of Solvi's den-made-grave, not until Aurelia's voice quietly crossed the limited distance between the two women.
Solulfur shifted her molten gold to Aurelia's silvered face, sympathy and appreciation both unveiled in their depths. She considered reaching out, to tuck her Shakti-Vaes against her chest and weather the storm for them both for just a minute, like on the shore of that awful lake to the north that terrible day. But something moved in the corner of her eye, looming and gilt. Azrael.
Had he been another wolf, the worn-down Sun-wolf would have outright bristled at the unwelcome intrusion, or at least shot him a glare fit to strip the skin off a weaker being. Azrael was hers, though; a strange wolf, brought into the fold by her very conviction he would make a valuable packmate, and he'd proved her belief in him true. Solulfur instead draped her tail across Aurelia's, tucking it close to the other woman's flank.
I...She started. What was she? Sorry? Angry? Helpless?
None of it would change anything.
I loved her like kin.She spoke in a low rumble; it could have been mistaken for the distant threat of a storm hanging over their heads to anyone not right beside Solulfur.
And I never told her.
