Chapter Thirty (1/2)

Everything fell silent at once. The pain, the blood, Snowblind's crooked laughter; they all vanished in an instant. Everything

was bright and shimmering, bright enough that Outlander believed it should have hurt her eyes, and yet it didn't. It was like a

forest of stars, swaying in winds of a twinkling sky filled with what looked to be endless moonlight. The scene left her

breathless, awestruck and lost in that one moment. She could stay forever.

Then she remembered what had just happened only a few heartbeats ago. The blood, the pain, the screaming. She had

been murdered. She was dead.

The trees made of stars continued to beckon her, but she no longer wanted to go.

She backed away, startled by the feeling of her tail swiping over fur. She spun around met with the face of a stoic brown

wolf. "Do you recognize me?" the stranger asked. Her voice was like a wolf's song, carrying through the forest up to the sky

in a melancholy note. It was familiar, a voice that brought comforting confidence that everything would be alright. Outlander

nodded, an involuntary smile filling her face. "Yes, mother."

It was difficult to recognize her without the deep battle scars and tired eyes, but the powerful she-wolf whose teachings had

guided Outlander since her youth was still there, proud and commanding yet peaceful and patient. She looked her coywolf

daughter up and down. While she had always seen Outlander's difference, she didn't point it out with malice or disgust, only

with the intent of teaching Outlander the adjustments she would have to make to the teachings of a wolf. "You have grown

strong, little robin," she remarked, using the nickname she had given Outlander for her red coat. "I'm sorry I could not see

your first success in hunting. You know if I could have changed the past-"

"You would have shredded that mountian lion to peices," Outlander spat, bitterness against the cruelness of the world rising

in her heart.

Her mother relaxed her eyelids and set her head up a little higher, the way she did when she was about to teach Outlander

something. "Late in my life, there are few wolf traditions I believed in, but I have never stopped believing everything happens

for a reason, little robin. If I had not gone, you would not be as strong as you are now."

Outlander wanted to retaliate, still believing it all to be unfair. Then sadness overcame her anger. "Have you come to

welcome me to the Forever Grounds?" Her voice grew small as she looked around the starlit canopy above. Her mother

gave a rare smile. "You know I have always tried to protect you, to make you stronger, but though I am your mother, I was by

no means motherly. I thought you should be welcomed by a proper family member."

She turned, gliding through the trees like the silent spectre she was. Outlander passed behind her, not wanting to look at the

evidence of the end of her life all around her. Her mother stopped suddenly, telling Outlander to look forward. There was a

large open area before them, with a tall, sturdy tree at its center. A small figure lay curled under its shade. Even at this

distance, Outlander recognized Scavenger's small frame. The real Scavenger. Tears threatened to burst from her eyes, but

as she stepped forward towards the tree, her mother's tail stopped her. She looked up at her mother, crestfallen. "I can't see

her?" she choked.

Her mother shook her head. "Not yet, but soon, I promise. You still have more to do."

Confusion and anger swirled through her mind. "I don't understand!" she shouted. In the distance, Scavenger's head lifted,

turning towards the sound of Outlander's raised voice. "It isn't over yet," her mother said calmly. "Someday, you'll be brought

back here, and she'll be waiting, but for now, you have more to do. Bone needs your help as much as you need his. He

needs to be seen not as an 'it,' but a 'who.' You've given him some peice of his heart, a peice of real life, a peice he'll lose if

he continues with the massacre he's about to start."

Outlander wanted to argue, but defiance had never been an option with her mother, and this time was no different. "I don't

understand," she repeated quietly, her voice breaking with greif. The edges of her vision had begun to taper, flickering away

like a burning flame. In the background she could hear the steadily growing sound of muffled shouting and growling, the

sound of wolves in battle. "You will, my robin " her mother sighed, touching her nose to Outlander's. "I taught you to use

anger as a tool. Now you must learn what I failed to teach you."

She continued to speak, but the sounds of wolves fighting drowned her out. The moonlight slipped away, and everything

began to fade to black. Outlander called out for her mother, but her voice echoed into a shadowy, lonely abyss ...