"Aaron?" Tentatively she bent her head to touch her muzzle against one tear soaked cheek, her own body quivering with unspent energy that had been set to send her body fleeing between the trees. After a short time he opened his eyes, looked up at her... and shared news that was almost too painful to believe. Solstice, dead? "Oh Aaron..." Carefully, delicately, she stepped around him, bent her knees and settled to the ground at his back, resting her muzzle upon his shoulder as she let him cry.
She hadn't noticed Lace, too wrapped up in her friend's sorrows to pay attention to anything else. But Kaiden noticed, the kitsune poised and staring up at the silver grullo, tails held aloft and crackling with electricity as he stood, a tiny guardian, between the young couple and all intruders. He was silent at first, accepting the right of another to receive and absorb the news that was shared, to pass it on. But a low growl escaped the many-tailed fox at the cold twist in the crafter's voice when disbelief turned to harsh questioning.
Yanked from her absorbtion with Aaron, completely unaware of the way time had put her in her mother's place in yet another strange way, Kimber pinned her ears back as she looked up at Lace. "He just became an orphan! Him and his sisters, and you blame him for crying?" An unfamiliar ferocity had entered her voice, hardened it as she dared to speak up against her elders. "You can't even give him the chance to mourn?"