Summer does not come to the Basin. It exists only in the blinding golds and pinks that washes over the snow on early mornings, the sorrowful dripping of slowly melting ice clinging to evergreen branches. Warmth never pervades deep enough into the frigidity of their home, of their hearts, to ever enjoy the season. But no matter the season, curled up in the back of dark caves and groves of trees, the one warmth that always remains with her is that of her twin. That morning, it is what keeps her solid. Whole. And truly, it is not just that morning. Dragon fire scars remind her of nightmares intended to be long past, but the blaze lives on in her eyes, dead and distrusting. All she can remember is the scream of her twin as the lapine fell dead and rotting from the canine jaws of the skull-faced cow, the whimpers of her fear as they had faced down the entire group keeping them hostage. She was still so weak, so useless. Arah had tried to curb her tongue, collar her with barbed wires of disapproval and shamed embarrassment directed towards those Asch managed to speak to.

Asch didn't care. She didn't need the approval of her mother or the acceptance of her herdmates. All she needed was her twin.

Her nuzzling may rouse them from their blissed half-slumber, but the hazel fawn with the hardened eyes scowled at the command that laced around her voicebox like a restricting threat. "They have earned no respect from me, mother," she hisses, low and disgusted. She is no dog to be chained, told to sit, lay down, roll over. She has had enough of bowing, of bending knee and tucking head, of closed lip smiles and rehearsed words filled with false sweetness and obedience. She is not obedient. She is hellfire and hatred, a maelstrom of rage and revenge, and she will not be chained. Especially not by the mare that called herself her mother. If anyone was supposed to know her better, know her thoughts and peculiarities, it was supposed to be her.

"I have nothing to say to them, let them babble on like idiots." It's caustic and foul, disgusted with the lack of action on behalf of the suffering her family had to go through. The soft pink of the healed scars on Arwen's coat glint in the morning light, only fueling the rage that simmered in her belly. They all cried vengeance, war, blood when they had come home broken and beaten. And had anything been done? Asch would not be content with their supposed efforts until she had the skull-faced bitch's skull on a pike to carry around with her personally.

The words that surround her when they finally arrive bore her, but she listens regardless. Children mull around, thick in numbers, but the she-wolf with the golden eyes pinned her ears and hissed through lightly bared teeth at any who attempted conversation or acknowledgment. She doesn't need them. They remind her of a childhood long lost, of friendships always offered to Arwen, never her. And when her mother reacted with such joy and delight to discovering Rhiannon...something inside her chest broke. When Arah dared to volunteer all of them to attend, the hell child restrained her tears burning in her liquid gold eyes and turned towards the ivory dame.

"I refuse." Turning, she dismissed herself without a care, for what did it matter to her if somebody commented on her making a scene? She wasn't, after all. Merely disappearing, away from the oppression of her mother, the disgusting happiness of her entire family that she could never relate to.

She was hurting.