If she had felt any modicum of relief at her siblings' arrival, solemn as the body they were helping to excavate, she didn't show it. She didn't even acknowledge them. She just kept staring straight ahead, mindlessly moving rock after rock until her limbs burned and her paws bled and Apollo was, finally, fully visible from beneath the rubble.

I'm sorry, the voice in her head kept repeating, distantly, like a dream turned murky and incomprehensible in the light of the day.

He was older. His limbs were long and lanky, his face sharper and more defined without all the puppy pudge she'd worked so hard to put on him, his rust red fur turned rustier with blood. She'd lost so much precious time.

Bragi stared long and hard, until she saw the first shallow rise and fall of his chest.