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The Blood War

Chapter Twenty-Six

(Chapter Twenty-Five was labled as Twenty-Four also)

Watching Winks try to fix Bone's contorted spine made Outlander's stomach lurch, so she turned away and watched a family of rabbits in the distance. The forest chirped and sang, beaming and growing all around them. It soaked in every beam the new sunrise shared, ignorant to the strife and pain hidden beneath its canopy.

"Amazing how things still look so beautiful, even when its all burning away slowly," she thought aloud.

"Aren't you just a ray of sunshine?" Bone growled sarcastically through gritted teeth.

"So often we focus on the death we see," Winks murmmered, "We never pay attention to the new hope, new life, that comes from those deaths." He looked up at Outlander. "If Bone hadn't killed your sister, he wouldn't be here, protecting you now, would he?"

Outlander looked back at the rabbit family, unwilling to confront that truth. That small, helpless coyote in her had forgiven Bone for the sake of survival, but the ferocious, infernal wolf the occupied the space the coyote left vacant still held onto that grudge, sinking its claws and fangs in deep, unwilling to let go.

No, it was the other way around.

The helpless wolf had lost its mother long ago and only wanted to survive in whatever way it could now. The coyote wasn't helpless, it was angry. It had been raised as a survivor in a coyote pack as a young pup. It had been taught the importance of not just a pack, but of family, and even when it was cast out, it would kill to protect one of its own.

Well now it had lost one of its own, and it would not be sated without blood.

Outlander wasn't sure she would ever be able to let go.

"And what good came of Phantasm's death?" she muttered darkly, trying to drown the thought of her unforgiving selfishness.

Winks sighed and went back to work at Bone's spine, "I still haven't figured that one out yet." There was a sickening pop and Bone yelped. Outlander turned and saw him hunched with his teeth bared, his face holding a look that said it was taking every ounce of restraint in his body not to rip the old wolf to shreds.

Then the anger faded. He was standing, without pain. He flexed his legs, his bone paws digging into the ground. "Thank you," he murmured with a sincere nod to Winks. The old wolf held his head high, proud of his work. "I think," Winks said, turning to Outlander, "Maybe Phantasm's death had a seed of hope in it after all. You'll be doing us all the favor of saving us from a bloody rule under Snowblind."

Bone didn't look particularly pleased or anxious. He looked tired. He always looked tired, and for the first time Outlander wondered if it was a sort of external, physical exauhstion, or whether he was just tired altogether, of everything, of life and death and pain. "Come on," he rasped. "Let's finish this."

~CL1

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