it's cold when he wakes up. it's nearly time for the snow to pile up high on the mountain, again ( higher than he is tall, matter of fact ). he snuggles deeper into the pile of his siblings and presses his paws over his nose to warm both of them with his breath. but try as he might, he can't get back to sleep; it's painfully early morning, the moon having barely slid out of sight, and alastor grinds his teeth in irritation. after the fourth or fifth time he shifts to try to get comfortable and maven kicks him in the side, he grumbles okay, okay, i'm going, and slouches his way outside. the little tufts of mane that are starting to length at his throat stick out in every direction. their curls are already impossible to tame and his coat is growing longer, too, to combat the cold of the summit. he looks a bit like the curly sheep that sometimes roam the ridge - and his siblings have poked fun at him about it at least once.

sniffing as he forces himself into the cold, he shivers and dramatically mutters brr!. ducking his head and shoving his shoulders up around his ears, alas hurries towards the little bit of stream that meanders past their den. still delirious from sleepiness, he drops his mouth to the water and drinks a few mouthfuls before allowing his haunches to dip and deposit him to a sitting position on the bank. blearily, he lifts a paw to rub at one eye, a big yawn splitting his jaws. stupid being tired and not being able to go back to sleep. stupid cold mountain.

stupid... well, everything was stupid right now. grumbling under his breath he sets his foot back down and squints at the brightening horizon as if glaring long enough will make the sun stay down so he could get more sleep.

@Ghyslaine

winter in the summit is brutal. ghyslaine cannot help but shiver, and as she had been out most of the night wandering around the mountainside, she hadn't been curled up in the den, hadn't been in a pile of warmth and fur. (because idk where she's at with where she's sleeping) the snow, however, was untouched as she neared the den with a pair of hares in her jaws, a fresh catch from the rocky side of the mountain, for the cubs.

she certainly did not expect anyone to be awake when she left her offering, but she is struck by the sight of her son- @Alastor, near the small stream that trickled by thed den. she paused a few feet away, before she continued her approach, to drop the hares near the den, before she turned back towards the stream. "nearly a year ago, you saw your first snow." she said softly, as she moved to stand near the stream, before she lowered her head to take in a drink.

"you've grown a lot since I've been gone." she observed, after she finished her drink, and focused on her son- giving him all of her attention, and hoping that he will engage with her.

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he hears her as she approaches and glances over his shoulder, expecting to see his dad or maven - they always seem to find him. but instead he sees @Ghyslaine walking towards the mouth of the den with a mouthful of hare. his fur prickles and he abruptly looks away, staring hard down at the stream at his paws, heart beating rapidly. he thinks maybe if he's still and silent she'll just... use it as an excuse to slink away. he doesn't think she came to visit, not this early, and not this quietly. but there's a twin thump, thump of her catch hitting the snow, a muffled sound that's nearly swallowed by the falling snow.

and then the crunching steps turn his way.

alastor's skin twitches and he grits his jaw, paws twitching as if he's about to bolt - but his mother is undeterred and she comes along his side with a soft statement of greeting. while she drinks, he processes this. it's not what he expects ( he doesn't know what he was expecting, really, though ) and he presses his lips together in a thin line. with her head dipped away from him, he stares hard at her - tracing the lines of her silhouette and making sure he locks it away in his memory.

he'd almost forgotten what she looked like; the golden glow of her fur, the soft sound of her voice and the way it sounds like a paw smoothing his fur down, cupping his jaw, chasing away the nightmares.

he blinks, eyes burning, and abruptly looks away. i remember. he says, his own voice pitched low - and it cracks in the beginning. he'd like to blame it on a dry throat but with the water right at his feet they'll both know the truth.

ghyslaine turns to him, then, and her words coax a little snort from him. you too. he says, but then realizes that's not what he means. he gives an awkward little laugh and shakes his head, turning his gaze finally back to her own. i mean - you've changed a lot. he doesn't mean it to sound so accusatory. but it does. and he flattens his ears into his curled tuft of growing fur between them. i mean, i think. he adds, shrugging a shoulder and dropping his eyes. it hurts to look at her, for some reason. i uh... i don't really... know.

it's a quiet admission because he doesn't know if he's angry she's been gone or if he's angry at himself for forgetting or if he's just sad about it.

about all of it.

there is no instruction manual for a mother who nearly dies and is separated from her family for six months. the last she had seen her son, he was but a cub toddling around her paws, and now, he was taller than he had been- larger- nearly a yearling, and she can't help but appraise him as she approaches. she can't help but notice the mane that's beginning to sprout from her only sons neck, the mane that marked that he was growing- the curly fur, that she wasn't sure where it came from, even the mauve coloring. he was handsome, in her eyes, her son would always be a handsome lad- and growing.

she missed so much.

her thirst was quenched, as he replied. a small smile pulls at her lips, at the memory. a memory of her son that had carried her, because it was one of those touching things that stuck out in her mind. then as he spoke more, she felt that flicker of guilt- that she had changed. because, he was right, she had.

"i did." she breathed out an agreement. "i'm sorry." an immediate apology, because wasn't that all she was now? apologies and regrets. "i can't justify it... but i can explain, if you want?" an offering to him, a chance to explain what had happened to her- why she was away. yet, she would leave it to him, because the more he learned of the world and the things that happened... the more darkness he was exposed too.

"do you like it here?" she asks, about the summit, struggling for any sort of conversation- where this should be easy, she struggles to speak, to make sense of it. it wasn't like she could just pretend her absence had never happened.

@Alastor

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she apologizes and his brow tightens. why? he murmurs, tipping his head slightly to one side and regarding her with uncertainty. dad told us... about the accident. he chews on the corner of his cheek, pursing his lips, and shakes his head. not like you wanted to fall and get hurt. he says it very nonchalant, as if waving a paw in dismissal. but they both know it's not quite that easy. there's a heaviness between them both - between them all? - that he knows can't so easily be cured. alastor glances away as his mother offers to justify it and he clacks his teeth together in frustration. at himself, at her, at the world.

it doesn't need justification.
it needs... they need a way to turn back the clock.

he swallows against the onslaught of feelings, caught between wanting to throw himself into her arms and dash back into the warm familiarity of the den he still shares with his dad and siblings.

@Ghyslaine presses, just a little more, for normalcy - but he can't. he can't. he turns his gaze up, peering through his curly mane with a growing frown. we all... we all looked for you. a lot. he says softly, tail tip twitching in discomfort. and i - i forgot what you looked like, mom. mom - because even with this looming thing between them she still is. his heart twists as he lifts his chin to fully look her in the face. i just don't really know how to.... he trails off, flicking a paw up towards her and then himself, a sort of all this gesture. dad was real broken up. it's a tiny whisper, an admission he doesn't really want to make because it's not his admission. but surely she already knows.

he doesn't mean to unload a guilt trip, but he isn't ready to just pick up where they left off.
he doesn't think he can.

what are... we gonna do? was she just going to slide back into their family as mom? as a wife? he doesn't know how he feels about the answer being yes or know.

this would have been so much easier, had she been found when he was still a babe in truth.

the accident

she supposed that is one word for it, one way to call what happened. the best way for her children to know of it, truly. what else did they know? ghyslaines eyes go a bit unfocused, and she is a bit slack-jawed as her memories snap her back.

laying on the side of the ledge, laying there, breathing in the day- talking to xylia- no sersie as she wants to be called. standing, raising to her feet, just in time to feel a push to feel a shove- and then falling.

it was always the falling that got her, the feeling of the air sucking underneath her body, her body twisting and reaching- paws grabbing for anything to stop herself and the sudden sharp crack as her skull careened into rock.

oblivion sends its greetings, and then she is back.

back in the snow, back staring at her son, her heart hammering in her chest, her mouth dry as if she did not just take a drink. her mind is blank as she tries to establish what has happened- how much time has passed since that word and her memories attacking her.

seconds, probably.

maybe hours, she does not know, but the fact that she is still standing here, lends itself to the former over the latter.

she struggles with his words, with understanding what he means- what he is saying to not lose herself in her memories again to not lose herself in the creeping feeling of despair.

this isn't fair.

he calls her 'mom', and that word clangs through her like a bolt of lightning, and tears- those are the stupidest thing that wells in her eyes, the pain of missing her children, her family and the pain of her son forgetting what she looked like.

guilt. rage. pain-- the emotions war within her.

there is no way to turn back the clock. there is no way to tell the world to stop, to spin backwards- to let her have her life back. there is no way that she can unknow that her son had forgotten what she looked like, that her husband was distraught in her absence. that she had yet to even see capucine- to scent her. that was something she hadn't even been able to address yet. (assuming as she's inactive she's not present in the den here)

does he expect her to have the answers, because it is an admission of knowing nothing that she gives. "i don't know what to do, either- how to navigate this." she admits, her voice a whisper. "i know what i want, and i know what i cannot have, but i don't know what to do."

perhaps it is time that @Alastor knows that his mother did not know everything, and perhaps he has already learned such a thing- because surely had she known what would have happened that day, she would not have gone?

all she wants is to wrap around her son, to breathe him in and to somehow pretend that everything has not changed. that they have not fundamentally changed.

"can i tell you what i do know?" a question for him, to see if he even cares to hear it from her.

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there's a moment where she, very obviously, tips away.

he reaches a paw out, then, alarm shooting through him. mom? he whispers, eyes wide - but she's still and silent and her eyes are so, so far away. mom! he all but shouts, then, his ears nestling into his curled fur and his hind legs kicking snow up away as he lurches to his feet and a step closer. but then she's back, blinking as if nothing had happened, and the boy can feel his limbs tremble. his blood runs cold as the realization that she's right here but also far, far beyond his reach hits him.

the world, he's realizing, is not easy to understand.
and it's not exactly fair.

carefully, he eases back, dropping onto his haunches harder than he means to when the adrenaline leaves him in a rush. alastor still can't bring himself to press into @Ghyslaine's chest and ask her to hold him. it doesn't feel right in some ways but it also doesn't feel kind - and, gods, all he wants is to be kind.

to be like that hazy far-off memory of a doting mother watching a grinning father tease a cub with stars in his eyes.

he tips his head forward and fights with the urge to cry. the tears sting the back of his eyes and as his mother explains that she doesn't know a hiccuping little sob escapes him, despite himself. angry that he can't hold it together - that he can't be there like his father can, that he hasn't been able to harness that sort of steadfastness that the valentine man always had. he wrenches his paw from the ground to rub the back of his wrist angrily across his face, sniffing sharply.

what she wants and what she cannot have.

he jerks his head up to peer at her, equal parts devastated and furious, as he makes his own idea of what those words mean.

am i still your son?

it doesn't come out with the anger he feels - isn't delivered with the emotion that wages war in his mind. it's quiet, barely whispered, with a heavy dose of desperation behind it. if she wanted what she couldn't have... did that mean.... were they no longer...?

his eyes soften at the edges and though he tries, the boy crumples with a sob. his head drops and his shoulder shake as he cries, trying to smother the sound with no avail.

because no matter what he wants ( what he wishes ) he's still just a child.

and he can't be the strong one.

'mom.' 'mom?'

those words clang through her mind, a beckoning back to life, her life. she focuses on the present world, the snow beneath her paws, the cold air in her lungs and her son, her beautiful son before her. she feels her brow narrow in concentration, confusion as she looks to him. she watches him recline back onto his haunches, and she wonders what is going through his mind, her precious son.

when she realizes that he is crying, that his paw he drags across his face is meant to wipe away his tears, she feels more frozen than the world around them- wondering what exactly she's said, and then he asks a question that makes her heart stutter a beat in her chest.

'am i still your son?'

she does not have to think about the words that come from her heart like a vow. "you are always my son." she breathes. "i do not care what life brings us, you are and always will be my son, @Alastor." a promise- she would fight gods themselves if they tried to deny her this. she could have a thousand lives, a thousand dreams and yet- he would always be her son.

she has refrained from touching him, but at his sobs- the way his shoulders seem to cave in on him, she moves forward, aiming to wrap a paw around him, to pull him into her chest. "you are my son." she breathes again. "and i love you. i will always love you, no matter what." a soft, fervent promise.

"i cannot give us back the time we lost, but i can promise to make the most out of every moment we have together until my last." because it will be her last first, she is determined to never outlive one of her children. because whether he hates her, whether he loves her, whether emotion builds like an inferno between them... she is his mother, and he is her son.

those facts cannot be changed, and she would not allow them to be.

ART BY NAME KIM, CODE BY LARS

she promises, fervent and almost violently, that he is still her son. that he will always be - and while that should be enough to soothe his angst and draw him from his sobs, he can't stop them now that they've come. her paws skirt across his shoulders and she pulls him close and alastor hiccups into the press of her chest. i m-missed y-you. he mumbles into her fur, around the deep gasping breaths. i love you too, mum. for a long moment he stays where he is, pressed close to his mother like he's a cub less than half his current age - until the sobs subside and he's left with big, heaving breaths.

and then those, too, quiet.

gently, he tries to disengage and pull away, rubbing a paw repeatedly over his face. i tried to keep everyone together. he promises, eyes baleful. i don't... think i did. he reaches out to touch her paw with his own. what happens next? he asks, heart clenching. he desperately wishes they could just go back to "normal," back to where they were in the beginning. when he was a babe. when he first saw snow.

but he's old enough, now, that he's aware that asking that of @Ghyslaine isn't really fair.

The very fact that he allows her to embrace him, allows her paw to wrap around his shoulders and pull him closer to her, is like a salvation to her. His words, internally feel like blows, as do his sobs- he should have never had to experience this grief- this loss. She had never wanted that for him. She had never, ever, wanted him to even experience sadness- and yet... she had been the cause of that.

As his sobs subside, and he pulls back she studies him as he speaks and immediately replies to soothe him. "It isn't your job to keep us together... but you did amazing. I know your dad appreciated all your help." Okay, so she's out on a limb but she knew that Nero would approve of what she said, because at least that much... wasn't different between them- the parenting aspects.

'what happens next?'

Ghyslaine truly does not know. "I can't speak for the whole future, but whatever happens... we will do it together." She says simply. "Do you like the Summit?" She asks, curious about what he thought of the snow, and just in general making sure he was content here. She moves her own paw out, so he can take it, to feel him rest his paw against hers...

@Alastor

ART BY NAME KIM, CODE BY LARS