It had been a long journey, a trip from the epicentre of his grief to the broken lands that surrounded it. Home had always been a nebulous term for the wolf, a word defined not by the physical places that he had slept but by the friends, lovers, relatives that had surrounded him. With Empusa gone, the one he had called home for the last year and a half as they ran their paws across a different continent, Beppe was left with a frail sense of what home really was. He was unable to find comfort in the den they had shared and had left it immediately, slinging his one remaining son into his arms and taking off to the east. At first he had not been aware of his destination, but as forest floors and wispy plains fell beneath his paws it became clear. It was the first place he had known on this continent, where he had felt safe and found friends, and most importantly it was where he had met her, the one whose blood pumped through the warm bundle cradled in his arms.
Each time he thought of her his eyes welled up with tears, their bitter heat trailing down his face. He did nothing to stop them, and indeed he wallowed in them as if his grief was a safe place to hide from the world. Otto was held tightly against his chest, and when they stopped to eat he was not allowed to wander more than a few meters away. He had been the cautious one, the one who had stayed on the shore when the others had jumped in, but still Beppe did not trust him to get lost. The male had lost everything else, and fate seemed fickle enough to steal his last baby away, as well.
Beppe did not sleep, and barely ate. Clinging to the feeble hope that Empusa would be back where they had met, he walked on. It was an unlikely rendezvous point, but his mind was not following reasonable lines of thought. He had invested so much of himself into his family, and now that they were gone it felt as if he was swept down the river and lost forever too. The wolf was little more than a shell, his only purpose to keep the pup in his arms alive and fat and to maintain himself in case the rest of his family somehow miraculously appeared. It was unlikely, perhaps even impossible, but Beppe would cling to whatever he could.
The wolf had lost track of time as he wandered, lost track of the number of times he had set his foot down, the number of times the sun had risen and fallen again. It had been ages, though, and his fur was ragged and dull from exhaustion, his mind edging on delirious. Though it was a stupid hope, a futile clutching at any little fraction of optimism he could imagine, he was counting on her being there, back in the land of Bleeding Souls, safe and dry and cradling the rest of their beloved children in her arms.
She was not. Beppe had walked through the scorched lands where they had met, towards the place that they had settled after the fire. The hope that had served as a paper thin mask dissolved and the desperation that lurked beneath showed its ugly face. Clutching Otto more tightly now, the wolf wandered towards a place he had once called home. It lacked his relatives and his friends, but it reminded him of their presence. The giant house, looking out across the Quartz Shoreline, still bore the changes the wolves had made to it.
He did not go in yet, and stayed instead upon the beach, staring out across the ocean. This ocean was his constant companion, the only one that had been there throughout his entire life. He had missed it when he was in the Rocky Mountains with Empusa, but the girl had filled the hole. It seemed that she had made the hole deeper, and now that she was gone all the water in the sea was unable to fill it.
He was still able to find some solace in the ocean and its eternal lullaby, but he hated what it reminded him of, he hated the roaring rivers that fed it. The male was torn and numb, and as the darkness started to descend for the hundredth time he sat upon the beach, knees bent in front of him and toes in the gentle waves. He stared at the sea, and then stared at his son on his lap fondly and sadly. The pup was not meant to grow up with no siblings and no mother. Beppe was not enough, but he was all the boy had.