Tis great! and I ramble!
Nearly ten days and ten nights had passed since the day everything had fallen apart. Ten days was hardly time to heal and Pripyat felt, perhaps more now than before, the unbearable emptiness that Arye had left in him. His chest felt hollow and if his stomach noted any of the sparingly small meals he provided it he did not know, that felt empty too. Not hungry, but empty, lacking. The young boy moved like a dead man through Ichika, his eyes seeing but not understanding what they saw and not really caring either. He knew that anything one held dear could easily be taken away and he pitied those who still loved Ichika like he thought he had. Like Arye had. Without her the spark that ignited his passion for the pack died quickly.


Nights were the hardest. He had spent the last three months scouring the lands for the perfect home, somewhere that Arye could really settle into. Finally he had found it, the tiny seaside cottage, still in town but just barely. On the outskirts of Trenton the tiny home stood almost untouched by the years but smelling of salt and spray and Pripyat knew they could have been happy there. He had been looking for Arye, to tell her about the home, when he had found her near to the lighthouse, laying on the shore, the waves unmindful of her stillness as the lapped over her delicate features. It was this image that came to him at nights, when he wandered, nowhere to sleep and no one to sleep beside. From the day he found her on the shores of Phoenix Valley until the day he found her on the shore of Ichika no Ho-en they had not slept apart, and now Pripyat had nine lonely nights under his belt and was about to add one more.


The ash colored boy built a fire most nights. A small private fire that would keep him warm and awake until sunrise, when finally he would fall into an exhausted slumber. This night was no exception and he built the tiny fire, settled himself in front of it and fixated his gaze on the flames. Eika. He was the firekeeper now. That had happened on the day Arye ceased to existed as well, and Pripyat remembered the first fire he had built. Ichikans cremated their dead, he knew that even then, and when after desperately running to and frantically lifting her lifeless body, it had been the first thought to occur to him. Arye had to be burned up. Yet for many hours Pripyat could do neither. The man had stood, clutching the body that once had been animated with life and laughter and what he was sure was love for him and now was just dead, unresponsive weight.


Only when the sun dipped below the horizon did he remember himself and with slow heavy steps he carried the girl away from the water's edge and laid her on dry sand. It was the way her body sank into sand when he released her did the anguish really plant it's self in him, a feeling he wouldn't be able to shake for far too long. Leaving the girl he carefully gathered wood, dry grass and the last flowers that had yet to give into autumn's demand for death and hibernation. Trip and trip again he brought these things and piled them upon the honey eyed lady, building up a large pyre. The others, the Ichikans, should have been alerted, they should have been helping, but selfishly Pripyat couldn't bear the idea of anyone laying their eyes upon her. Arye had been his in life, she had to be his in death as well.


And ten days later Pripyat still mourned her, and mourned her more than he had. Daily the pain increased, and each time Pripyat believed that he could not feel any more sorrowful he thought of the way her lips lifted right before she was about to laugh or the sound her feet made when she was in full flight from him. It was these details that haunted him as he stared into the fire that night, and it was the knowledge that he could never again make new memories of him that caused him to pick up the stick, hot in the fire. Why he felt it right to do so, he could not quite explain, but he brought the glowing thing to his face. Closing his right eye tightly he held the branch to his skin, the smell of singed fur and flesh comforting in its own way.


The pain was a relief he found, for the first time since he found her dead he did not think of Arye. As the heat continued to burn layers of skin even when he pulled the branch away from the now raw and pink skin he thought of his father and of his mother and of Phoenix Valley. Throwing the branch into the flames, he stood and left the fireside, a curious finger stroking the fresh burn. Pripyat moved through the nighttime woods without much thought as to where he went. Pripyat was barely aware that he moved until the flickering of lights were before him and he wondered if that was the fire he had made. Yet that was behind him, probably dying out with the man to attend to it and drawing closer he discovered the lighter of the candles.


"Tawny?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears, realizing he had not spoken a word since whisper I love you, I love you, I love you, goodbye to a lady who probably would never know the desperate declaration of affection. The boy towered over the creature wrapped up in the animal skins, her scent familiar but her face hidden and he wasn't too invested in whether she responded to his unhappy inquiry.