A comforting tongue ran over Neela's head before the feeling of the hug suddenly changed; from her limited perspective it took Neela a few seconds to realise that Tony was rocking her. A small part of her was humiliated at the treatment, being rocked like a small child, but that small part was ignored as Neela slowed her breathing and buried her head deeper into Tony's fur. With her eyes closed the rocking motion wasn't entirely dissimilar to the rocking of the waves when she was onboard the Meria, a sensation that had long soothed her when she was troubled.
Neela didn't want to move, didn’t want to speak, she just wanted to stay here with her eyes closed and push the world away, forget all of the pain that she had suffered over the last year. Four years of life and what did she have to show for it? A pack that she only felt half at home in, the shattered remains of a family that would sooner kill her than see her and a hunk of wood with a name. far better, Neela thought, to abandon all that to this darkness and comforting scent.
Ultimately though Neela knew that she couldn’t just abandon the world like that. Her life had gone horrible wrong but it was the only one she had. Still the temptation to stay like this longer was there, but Tony deserved an answer. Compromising Neela opened her mouth to speak, though the rest of her remained still, "Leon" A fresh, unexpected, surge of pain caused Neela to stop for several seconds but she soldiered on, "My son. Today we would have been celebrating his birthday" The sentence was worded badly but it was all that Neela could manage at the moment, too torn up to pay much attention to her wording.
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