To some degree, Amaris never left the Respite.

He had gone to the South on Plague and Dream Visitor Business, but when he and Aelia returned to their home, they found it abandoned. A shock it had been at the time, but Amaris and his twin had easily found his parents not long after. Perhaps it had been the Five’s all-seeing hand guiding them both to where they were needed (like intervening when Amaranth had tried to kill Valeska and instead amputated her silver tail)…

Amaris had returned to the Respite after that. The horror of what he had witnessed was enough to send him into an early grave had he stayed much longer between the howling river and that blue flame. Instead, he found comfort and solace in the familiar dens he remembered as a child. The cavern walls were cold but filled with the warmth of memories, and for now, that was enough to soften his fraying edges.

He had kept to himself since then.

And only at the sound of his mother’s call, interestingly enough, in the mountains that they called their home, Amaris rose from inside his cave and snuck a nose out into the windy and frozen morning.

She was calling everyone home.

Amaris blinked into the dreary, cloudy morning and stared into the distance where the northern mountains painted the sky. Was this what healing felt like? The sound of his mother’s song on the wind as they waited for the faces of all those they had known and lost return to a place they called their home.

Maybe.

The Moon lifted his head to the sky, following in the wake of his mother’s voice, and howled in harmony with her own.