laughter filled the air, joyous triumph when isabella found out she was pregnant. it'd been a miracle after all. she and renato had been trying since they'd been married. it'd been four years since then. one of the main medics at the college monitored isabella and confirmed that there would be one child; renato and his wife couldn't be more grateful for even one child. they kiss each other until the sunlight dims and they must return home. midnight comes on a blood orange moon; isabella yells out, shaking the den and waking renato from his deep sleep. he fumbles to her side and sees the amount of blood she has lost, and her shaking paws. he cannot leave her side because he knows. another few minutes in, vedette appears to the world covered in blood. there is little time to speak, isabella murmurs unconditional words of love to her husband, and seeks her daughter; for the first and last time. she lays her eyes on the miracle and laughs, softly. "oh she's just how i pictured.. a vision of your mother." she turns to renato who's face is damp from sweat, blood, and tears. and for the last time, he kisses his wife.

renato was never the same after that. he threw himself into work and bianca (renato's mother) parents with what little mind she has left. when vedette turned one, her grandmother passed within the coming weeks. renato, with a grief-stricken heart, had to look his daughter in the eyes for the very first time. they say nothing to each other. vedette had been raised not to ask questions. they rarely answered or met with a wild-eyed look bianca would give her before swatting her off to the garden. they dug her grave. it was the very first time that they'd ever been alone together, besides the one night he was left to deal with his wife's body and her. the night came to an end, grave dug, words unsaid. renato doesn't have to tell her to stay. she waits up most the night for her father to return to the den that the three of them had shared, now two. he comes home stumbling and drunk. she doesn't speak but cleans up the vomit off his pelt.

she reaches two. renato is still around; however that may be. physically but not mentally. work and alcohol, the two things he loved. more than his daughter. she was left to pick up everything that had shattered him. the glass cuts her paws, scarred over enough, calloused. there is one night it is not enough. a wildfire starts from a dry season and a lightning strike. midnight, a new moon, her father is drunk and she is trying to carry him through the fire that licks at their heels. they barely make it out alive. but even making it out, renato's lungs were cooked. only coughing ash. within his last moments on the other side of river ness. he chokes up the words, "i could never look at you sober. you look too much like her." she was a spitting image of her grandmother, but she has a feeling. he does not mean her, but more-so the mother she never got to meet.

she buries him next to her mother's grave and where bianca was. she looks at each of the graves and turns without a word. next she ends up at the army's door. ash and dirt collected on her pelt, they take her in. she's got nothing else. renato had instilled it in her everything in this life you had to work for. it was the passing comment with bianca when he brought home little food and smelt of booze. she specializes in natural disasters. she'd been entangled with one since birth.