the opposite of moderate

If this was death, it was a good one. It was expected. The North had chilled her bones and she'd left a legacy she could be proud of. Children and heirs - those to carry on the legacies they'd been thrust into proudly. Even Antares had finally grown into a son she was proud of. He'd given her grandchildren to dote on, little beauties with their pale coats and their grit and determination. She'd grown past the Sidereal Princess into the Northern Queen. The Ostara. And dying like Auryn had would have been perfect - in battle, protecting their home and their family. Instead, it had been age that came finally for her in the coldest night of the year. Her last breath had been a slow plume of heated fog before it dissipated into the air and her soul to the stars again. 

She wouldn't call it a peaceful afterlife, after all, because Salene wasn't exactly the most laid back person. She never had been. Ease and just lounging about just simply wasn't her thing. But the most that she had found peace in was the stars. She was raised on their stories and she knew them dot by dot, naming the constellations and the bands that would show in the skies above. That was the first thing she saw when her two toned eyes opened again, first the seafoam green and then the turquoise, and she'd seen above her the stars as they shone so brightly above her head and there was a peaceful sort of feeling to it. She wasn't afraid. She didn't feel any sort of fear or dread or unease. 

But then it was a familiar scent - pines, and a feeling of fog curling around her - and it was like being home. Her head shot up then - and true to form, she was curled in Sphinx' hollowed tree where she'd given birth to Renatus and she felt tears fill her eyes. It was quick and gasping when the emotions washed over her and she rubbed her snout against the tree and she could faintly smell her mother, her brothers, and it was her forest. She waited until she was more composed before she crawled out of Sphinx Hollow and took her first real, true, deep breaths of Winterheart Forest. Without needing confirmation she knew where she was. She knew it in the particular ways the snow weighted the branches down and how beautiful it all looked. She wouldn't break down, at least not actively - not when she had the Endore mantle resting on her head. She was home. This was her forest, through her whole life, even when she was away. When she thought of home, this was it. 

The peace in her was shattered though when she heard the desperate sounds of another wolf. Instantly, her ears were forward, cutting through the trees that she knew and the predictable paths she'd run since her infancy itself. There - that cluster of rocks, where she'd stormed off after Julis had tried to insist that it was 'Daddy' and not 'Kimoto' and she'd broken a claw scratching at the surface and picturing Julis' face. The clearing where she'd told Auryn that they were meant to be. Where he'd claimed her as his own. Where she'd scratched and clawed and proven herself worthy of her mother's legacy. She couldn't get caught up in that right then, however, because what she saw before her was the makings of a pack. Something was happening here - the scents of others layered atop each other and Salene dropped low, hovering just above the snow to watch.

---

+2 Discovery Points

the staff team luvs u