There is this coming event when we will finally see the light of day - inscription on the Though We Suffer So sculpture in Wolfhold

Aulka dreams.

She dreams that she is running along a forest floor of pine needles, breaths sharp in her chest like pointed rocks. She dreams that Owna is ahead of her, leading the desperate charge towards the wide and deadly-swift Elktide river that splits their territory with the next.

She dreams that instead of the pebbly, flat shore, Elktide rushes along the bottom of a deep gorge, instead of Owna jumping in with her-connected only by the sturdiest stick held in tight jaws between them-Aulka jumps alone with a twig clamped in her teeth.

In a swirl of bubbles and white water and screams that drown with her, the scene shifts and, exhausted, riddled with sticks and leaves and matted fur, she stands alone on the edge of Tatalune's territory. Scentless wolves lead her past a muddled landscape that wavers as if it is underwater, to Tatalune's Akenwul in a den dug into a hill.

This time, she explains her predicament alone. This time, she pleads for refuge alone. This time, she is granted a place in a pack that knows no loss like hers, alone.

It is Kaone, not Maikai, who greets when she emerges from the den, hollow. He asks her if she would stay to become a star or bound away to a new world.

When she turns it back onto him, he tilts his head, scarf rippling in the soft breeze, gold eyes seeming to look straight through her to the glass part of her soul. Why would I leave?

Then she is sitting on a rise just outside the pack's dens, world washed to dull colors mixed with mud and charcoal, watching as if far removed from herself. Wolves pass or bound in friend groups below, distorted and smudged as if she is looking through a flowing river to the rocks under its surface. Distantly, mutedly, their laughter and high, excited barks and bright happy chatter, reaches her ears.

They are happy, full of life, full of laughter and songs and beautiful things, and she, sitting atop a hill removed, feels like glass. Transparent, unseen, bending the word ever so slightly with her presence; fragile, brittle, delicate as if a single step could send her shattering; hollow, empty, a sum of edges and surface and nothing left in between.

Without her old pack, who is she? Without healing skill, what is she? Without a soul to ground her here, what is left to keep her turning completely into glass?

Aulka dreams, and when she wakes on another riverbank, the scent of pine and wet fur and sweet water heavy in the air and Maikai's star weeping from its perch atop a floating island, she is alone.

⥊⬩⬫⬥🌟⬥⬫⬩⥋

Water hisses and shushes behind her, flowing a herd's length down before rushing off a cliff and roaring down to a ground somewhere far, far below. Aulka lies half in, half out of it on a bed of smooth, rounded stones, staring at a small white flower peeking out between two stones, one pale gray, the other almost rosey in hue. The flower is right in front of her nose and flutters each time she breathes.

Only a nose-length past her snout is the start of earth and short, mossy grass, and not too far beyond that, tall wide-boughed pines that stand tall like rows upon rows of abandoned statues, broken only by the wizened, grizzled oaks that hunch beside them.

From somewhere inside of their canopy, a bird trills, and she lets her eyes slide close. Perhaps, if she lays here long enough, perhaps if she listens hard enough, the sounds will fill her up until that is all she is: a part of the landscape, a whisper in the Dream, a thing that is not a wolf but something else.

It would be better than this, the numb heavy feeling weighing her down as if she was a cold, wet stone, a towering, sleeping glacier, a distant cry of a bird on the wind. It is better than breathing with the why-am-I-the-only-one-to-survive?, or, why-am-I-not-enough-to-save-anyone?, and, why-am-I-doomed-to-be-left-alone? It is better than remembering that Kaone, her friend, is gone.

A warm breeze ruffles through her fur and nudges at her paws. It turns from through the leaves, just over the gurgle of the water, to sigh close in her ears. The sigh sounds like a word wrapped up in the almost-tune of windvoices, and she only need to strain to understand it.

Aulka does, and gradually, under the river's whispers and the leaves murmurs, Maikai's song begins to form. It's soft like a newborn's nose, haunting like mist dancing over a still lake, sincere like the words spoken to still-dying freshkill.

And in the song, he asks her questions. He asks if the stars are lonely, or is it the wolves below who suffer. He asks if she will be the one to stand in the gap, or will she be the one lost to the Dark. He asks if she will come and ease his suffering.

He asks in the song, in the gentle way of his, not to hurt or harm, not even to convince, but because he cares. Cares about her, about how glass her soul has become, how deep her sorrow reaches, how isolated she feels inside her own fur. Remember what is dear, he asks her and she does.

She remembers the flickering cascade of fireflies like stars and Kaone's fur so close to brushing hers, his tone hushed with awe and fondness when he told her that their world was beautiful. She remembers eating dream-fruit in an orchard full of pieces of legends collected like rare feathers and laughing with muzzles sticky with juice. She remembers sharing glimpses into each other's lives and how kind he had been when grief gripped her unexpectedly. She remembers him, Kaone, asking her to heal his friend.

In this, she finds her answer.

The breeze strengthens, warm breath winding around her paws, and with aching heart, she opens her eyes. Yes, she whispers to Maikai in the breeze. I will come. Perhaps she has lost everything, perhaps she cannot heal those who fall bleeding at her paws, perhaps she is not enough to change the many, but she can still heal a single wolf, can still step up and be the one to stand in the gap.

With whines lodged tight in her throat and a broken noise tangled in her fangs, she hauls herself to her paws, pausing only to lick healing into her injured leg. Dripping and pawsteps heavy, she follows the breeze under the shadow of pines.

⥊⬩⬫⬥🌟⬥⬫⬩⥋

Where the star weeps is a place like no other in the Dream.

Spray from tall, glittering waterfalls sprinkles Aulka's fur as she stands at the edge of the forest and a cliff that shoots steeply into a great and deep basin below. Rivers like she had been carried in throw themselves over the edge from all sides, creating the effect of the whole mountain tip pours itself into the lake at the bottom.

Above the basin over chunks of dirt and rock, covered in grass or roots or hanging moss, with the largest ones cultivating trees on small slopes. A path of smaller chunks bridge the gaps between the larger ones, leading up to the largest of them all where Maikai's star hovers.

Golden tears spill from its tips and cascade over the chunks of land in a complex of streams and waterfalls before spilling the rest of the way down to the bottom. Each shining waterfall reflects the strengthening gaze of ser as he starts to rise from below the horizon, or as if each one glows with light from within, and Aulka can almost sense the warmth radiating off of them.

Come, the breeze winding through her fur urges with Maikai's voice. Climb.

The first chunk, barely a wolf-length rock, dips slightly as she steps from solid ground to it. She pauses, easing more of her weight onto it until she is sure it will not drop beneath her before placing all her paws on its surface. The next rock is the same, and the next one after that, each larger than the rest and dipping less and less.

She winds up and up and up, golden spray misting her fur, the sky bright and beautiful, the land even more so. The song in the wind gets louder as she climbs, warmth brushes her fur as she nears the star, and with each step, each hop and leap, more and more of her unravels until she is crying.

Crying like the morning howl she and Owna made the night it was finally safe to do so. Crying like the nest of windvoices back home. Crying like the lonesome call of a hawk on the wind. Crying like she hadn't done since losing her pack.

On the first island with a tree, she stops under its shade beside a waterfall tumbling into a stream of golden tears, gasping with the ferocity of her whines, and puts it all into one long, anguished howl. It's loud and grating and pulls from her throat like the edge of a blade, but she pushes it out, throws it to the sky, screams it above the roar of the many waterfalls until her breath is spent and her grief echoes for all to hear.

Panting and shaking from the force of everything inside, everyone she's ever lost, every shard of glass wedged in her fur, she sweeps her gaze across the Dream, their imperfect paradise. Across the pointed tops of pines, the crags of the mountain peak surrounding, and the sky swathed in pinks and yellows and soft morning purple.

She fought her way up, she suffered a Challenge, and gained and lost Kaone. All this, is it worth it? Is it worth all the pain she has endured?

The wind whips through her fur, buffeting it one side then the other, singing like only the wind can. Closing her eyes, she breathes in its scent, the hint of open skies and a wolf she only knew in a Dream. Whines rise to her throat again and, heart heavy, she turns and climbs once more.

The closer she gets, the more the air ripples with power and warmth, the great waterfalls of tears spraying her coat with stray droplets, deep voices roaring until even the wind cannot be heard over them. As she leaps from the last rock to the main island, a barrier passes over her fur like a warm tongue and the waterfalls' voices quiet, though the pounding of the water still fills the air.

Aulka lands on a small strip of lush grass that acts as the lip to a great pool of golden tears that only ripple from the waterfalls pouring from the star above, as if the tears were viscous like honey instead of water. Beyond that, directly under the giant star with waterfalls of tears pouring down around him, curled up with his nose tucked between his outstretched back legs, is Maikai.

Tentatively, she places a paw on surface of the pool and finds, despite how it ripples, it is as smooth as glass warmed by ser's gaze. Winding around a waterfall, she approaches Maikai and stops just in front of him, a lump heavy on her tongue. He's curled up, a slow rasp to the rise and fall of his chest, and his skin hangs loose on his ribs, scorch marks and bloodless tears riddling his dark purple and swirls of brighter purple, teal blue, and soft yellow fur.

Birds flutter up from her stomach to her throat, rising with the ache that is different from the void of loss and sorrow. Maikai, she murmurs, no croaks, and she swallows, licking her nose before continuing. You asked if the stars are lonely.

The memory flashes with a hollow throb and she closes her eyes, tipping her head back so the spray from the waterfalls breathes against her cheeks and muzzle. I think...that they are sad. I think that there, in the sky, the watch and watch and are never able to help those below save for preventing more evil from touching our planet. I think they yearn for mates or littermates or packmates or friends to join them, that they miss those who they left behind.

I think, the lump returns to her throat, thick and syrupy with whimpers, that they miss us. Perhaps in that way, they are lonely.

Perhaps, in that way, she is lonely too. Instead of the stars weeping, it is her, standing alone on the once frozen planet, looking up at the sky that separates her and her pack. Something in her chest shudders and crumbles, and she lowers her head, opening her eyes and gazing down at her distorted reflection in the pool she stands on.

You asked me to stand in the gap when I am neither Shard or Hero. I'm just a wolf, Maikai. I'm a healer that can't save anyone, a survivor of two with no one else, one that can't even fight to save herself. Her voice breaks, whines sliding beneath each word. I just want him back. I just want all of them back.

The last of her strength fades and she sits hard, the thud rippling up her spine as if she would shatter like glass, as if she is glass already. Yet here she is, crying in front of the Dreamer, still clinging to life and breath.

In between her half-closed eyelids, the pool beneath her seems to strengthen in its glow until it is almost too bright. In the afterglow, a voice, so familiar voice, murmurs, You, Brave Healer, Strengthened Soul, are more than enough.

Aulka snaps her head up and, standing opposite her, made out of lowing golden liquid, is Kaone.