[private] where you gonna run to?

[breach]

for so long had my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary point

Breach can only frown at Maze’s confession, her lips pulling deeper and deeper at the corners, her eyes narrowing slightly as she tries to understand. “Fail me?” she echoes, not understanding. She shakes her pale head. “Maze, you have never once failed me or done anything but bring honor to this pack.” Had she not volunteered to represent them in the Alliance? Had she not made it to the final rankings? Had she not been the only one to step up when Breach had been threatened—there to help her when no one else was?

But she doesn’t speak further, letting Mazikeen complete her sentences, finishing her thoughts.

When she’s done, she cannot stop herself from laughing—the sound soft. She steps forward to press her nose to the mare’s cheek and then slides forward to embrace her fully. A show of affection she does not allow herself often. “Of course you will come back stronger,” she says quietly. “We will get your shifting back,” this with a little more steel. She is not upset with Mazikeen for gambling with her shifting, but she knows more than most the rules that she has set—that she has already bent more than she should.

For all of her love for Mazikeen, she cannot snap them completely.

Instead she steps back, searching the mare’s gaze.

“You can stay here until your quest is complete,” it is her home, after all, and this she feels confident about promising. “And once your shifting is returned to you, then there will be no need for concern.”

She doesn’t address the possibility that Mazikeen would perhaps never be able to shift again.

The idea of it, the consequences it would bring, are too much for her to bear.

though ritual pyre sending smoke to the sky as the building continues to burn
though rapt in the ruin, the pain in the grave, is lies you leave tied to the earth