If the world was ending.

I'm sleepy but one for @Dirge!   <3

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Nyx could not remember her foolish abandonment of one child to search for another in an unrelenting blizzard, but the absence of each was the first thing she felt when the cold roused her awake. She lifted her tawny crown from atop outstretched forelimbs to look around her, hopeful for the most fleeting of moments to find them nestled nearby, before the familiar weight of disappointment settled in the void of her chest.

She pulled herself upright and briefly shook out her pelt, groaning to herself as she stretched out the stiffness from her aging muscles before preparing to begin another day's search. Nyx didn't know how long she'd been attempting to locate her daughters, only that she had to. Each new dawn was met with new determination, so she prowled forward and out into the open to plot her next route.

The breeze brought Winter's biting chill, but Nyx was undeterred. With one last sweep of her searching eyes up at the proud mountain range before her, she pressed on and upward to begin anew.


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He began ranging, little by little. It was hard not to get caught up into it and perhaps he would have if not for the circumstances. Even if slowly and surely they sought out and found one another among others, Dirge could not shake the disturbed feeling of how this had come to be, let alone how to place where they were in the world.

If he hadn’t been burdened by seeking out family, he may have tried to venture further to see what he could find, to see where the edges of unfamiliar blended with the familiar. Having that sort of situational awareness would have helped him to get his bearings on a much larger scale. He wouldn’t acquire this however, no matter how much he desired it, or how much of it he could chip away.

Slowly, he was coming to terms with it.

His wandering had taken him not too terribly far away from where they had been presently rendezvousing for the time being. They had enough to sustain themselves by means of food, water, and potential shelter from the winter weather, so there was little reason to move on from it. Having at least that central location to return to and find each other was beneficial and as the days rolled and merged together, he had begun to branch out further and further.

It was on this particular adventure that he dared to go a little further than the last time; he found he was thankful that he did when he picked up on a familiar scent trailing in the cold wind. Nyx. Without consideration of the pros and cons, Dirge immediately adjusted his path to follow hers along the sweeping, sleepy slopes.

It did not take him long to catch up with her.

“Nyx,” he had called out to her, scarcely moments after laying eyes on her. She was upright and seemed well, though there was something unsettled about her overall posture that he could not place or understand—but he could empathize; no doubt the strangeness of it all had rattled her just as it had him.
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She picked her way quietly and carefully through rugged terrain, her sights set on higher reaches where she might find a better vantage point. There, she hoped to look out at the world beyond and determine the best place to assume her search for her cubs, or at least for something she might recognise. It did not take long, however, for something familiar to find her instead.

An ink-tipped lobe swivelled backward at the announcement of her name, and she paused in her tracks through the snow to investigate. Vibrant eyes observed the approach of another of her kind, swathed in autumnal shades that she knew at once belonged to her only brother. “Dirge,” she answered, surprise in her tone to see him as she turned. Nyx' tail gave a soft wag, and she retraced her steps to come upon him more swiftly.

She met him bodily, keen to press herself to him and test the scent of him, assure herself that he was real and not some conjuring of her hopeful imagination. Reaching to push her nose among the toughened guard hairs of his proud shoulders, the tawny Ostrega emitted a strained, excited whine at the realisation that she was no longer alone as she withdrew to look upon his face with renewed enthusiasm. “You've definitely made a habit of finding me right when I need you to.”


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She turned towards him, sunlight catching her bronzed furs and washing them in a gilded glow. There was a spark of recognition immediately, a light that did not reveal itself so easily but had grown steadily since they had come together again. It was that spark in her gaze that he found himself relieved to see—the events of the past still had their ways of bouncing around in his recollection like an echo chamber.

He let her come to him, embracing her and checking her all over in the same breath to ensure that she was well. She didn’t seem any worse for wear, thankfully; they had been lucky in that regard for some time. Very much like he had been when he had come to in this high strangeness, she seemed adrift and alone, but saved by happenstance.

“One of my finer charms, I suppose,” he murmured gently into her plush fur. “I am relieved to have found you—are Ciri and Elke with you?” He had seen neither hide nor hair of them, but there were his own children still to find. And there were many things about this land that he had yet to uncover, fragments of the past left untold that he did not know whether or not he would recover.
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“One of your only charms,” the tawny she-wolf quipped in response, a hint of playfulness in her tone to match the tug of a smirk on her maw. To tease him came so naturally, and she expected he would not falter in his return as was the way of siblings, no matter their age.

The joy she felt at this unexpected reunion was short-lived, however, at the mere mention of her missing brood. Nyx wilted to hear their names, to be reminded of the hollowness she felt right at the heart of her in their absence, and the light was quick to vanish from her vibrant eyes. She turned her face away. “No,” she answered simply, “I don't know where they are. I've been looking for...” She shifted awkwardly in place as she considered the weight of her shame to have lost track of her own children, and the inability to calculate an exact length of time she'd been searching for them.

Silence lingered, and her raven-tipped lobes tilted backward as she suddenly thought to ask: “how did you end up here?” Dirge had made a family of his own among Hydra's, which she was sure would remain forever nestled on their steadfast Moonspear.


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He should have known.

After all, the majority of his own children seemed lost to the four corners of the world in this strange place—or perhaps it was the other way around, and they had been lost. Part of him deigned to think it did not matter either, as none of them had been able to make much sense of the hows or whys in what had brought them there in the first place.

He couldn’t focus on that, at least not right now. His ears splayed back for a moment at the nerve he had touched on her, but her composure did not waver for long. Another time ago, he knew it would have, but the permanence of her sorrows seemed to keep themselves in check. Perhaps even that could have been attributed to their bizarre situation too.

“I awoke near here,” he began to explain, “and found Hydra shortly thereafter. Altair and Osiris are here, Lyra too.” It was a brief tale, but not one that he had to put a spin on. Not that it would have done him any good, since whatever he couldn’t explain Hydra may have been able to, provided she had made any more sense of things than he.

“We’ve been scouting the area out since then,” he went on, “and our experiences seem to be the same. Tough to make sense of, but… it is what it is for now, I suppose.” His shoulders rolled in a shrug of sorts; he doubted it was much of an explanation of all. His own memories felt fragmented and the questions as of late had rarely had answers to them. Maybe a brief snippet here or there, but no context where it was supposed to fall on the timeline of recent history.

A troubling thing, it was, but the present would keep him occupied.
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There was no real recollection of how Nyx had come to find herself there. She remembered the snow and the wind, calling Ciri's name over and over until her throat felt hoarse, and had lay down to rest for a while before resuming her seemingly endless hunt. What had initially been a search for one daughter became a realisation that there were two to find, for something unknown within her knew that the first would not be where she'd been left.

To hear that her brother had roused close by was a curious thing, and hope bloomed in the vibrant hue of her sunflower eyes. Her babies could not be far then, surely, if Nyx and Dirge had found themselves in the same area.

News of Hydra and one of her sisters also warmed her, though it was disheartening to learn that only two of the Alphas' eight children had been located. Nyx' smile faltered and she regarded her sibling with a gentle sorrow. “They'll find their way to us,” the lioness mustered, and wanted to believe that they all would. “Won't they?”


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He nodded; he was sure that eventually they would find their way to them. Collectively their children were not helpless by any means. They were grown enough to fend for themselves, with or without the guidance of their peers and family around. That much he was confident in, though the paternal side of him would have rather them be near and safe. These were strange, unfamiliar lands, and even Dirge knew there was relative safety in numbers. Had he not needed to worry and consider what he did, it would have been a different story altogether.

He did not waste time in thinking on it.

“Given the time, I’m sure they’ll find their way to us,” he reassured her, nudging her shoulder with his nose. “We’ve always found each other, after all. I would expect the same of them.” And if they did not… well… there was little he could do in that regard but hope for the best. Perhaps not knowing was better than knowing whatever fortune had in store for them, deigned, designed, or not.

“We’re set up not too far away from here. I could take you there, or we could search instead.”
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She looked at her brother, hope in her glassy yellow gaze, as he dipped his muzzle in a nod to acknowledge her concerns. Dirge shared that if their children did not reunite with them first, that they might find each other - and a smile hinted on her muzzle as she turned her head to look out across unfamiliar territory. She hated that Ciri and Elke were out there somewhere and she knew she'd hunt high and low for them, but Dirge's guidance was something she knew she could trust.

To root herself would not be easy. Whatever was meant to be would be, with or without her intervention; having a safe place ready for when her fledglings returned seemed like the most sensible option. “Dirge,” she sighed, “let's go home.”

Let's build a life worth coming back to.


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When Nyx finally came to a decision, Dirge turned and guided her back the way that he had came. It wouldn’t be a far trek to make it to the scant borders of the territory they were calling Empyrean, though it mattered not to him how long it would take to reach the tucked away sanctuary they were taking for themselves.

Once they reached that point, it would only be a matter of settling in; he knew Hydra would want to see her, knew that he would resume his own travel and add to seeking and finding his nieces along with his children and their assorted family. He could only hope that in the strangeness of it all that they would be fine.

But he truly had no way of knowing that for certain.
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