ooc: Saluce is gone, and now X'yrin's world is feeling that much smaller..
The end of the world came not in a display of fire and brimstone raining from the heavens, nor with gaping maws splitting the earth apart. No mountains crumpled, no screams tarnished the calm air. None but one felt the world ending or knew of its demise.
It came in the form of a waning scent… an unmarked boundary… hungry pups… and an empty stable. Coupled with a shop unattended and a den left unclean. It came with no collar nudged around her neck, nor a kiss to awaken her in the morn. It came so softly and quietly, she hadn’t known this world… her world had ended at all.
But when at last her eyes were open to it, when she could see the devastation with her own naked eyes, she could not bring herself to shed tears for the loss of what she had known, though her heart begged for relief. How it ached and plagued her for a tear to fall on its behalf. Instead, she fulfilled the roles that had been left for her alone. The borders were remarked, empty bellies were fed, homes were cleaned and checked… life was continuously taken for the prosperity of the pack. And when all was finished, still she would not cry. She found herself sitting within the fields on the warmest of spring days tending to her calming craft as though all was right with her world. As though her hastily constructed patches would hold and no tear would fall through.
Though the world had ended, none but she would know it and none would know the extent she had gone to conceal that truth. They would see the smile of a Shepard and know all was right in their world created within the protective shadow of the mountain. They would see only a pillar of strength, not a wilting husk of a weathered reed. They would see a smile whose light would rival the radiant sun, and see only boundless energy. They would see only a woman tending to her craft in her idle time, sitting upon the splitting seams of her world, trying desperately to hold them together.