None of this has happened. From the soul-crushing misery of the initial realisation has come...numbness. The gargoyle feels nothing - her heart is as stony as the grey of her coat. She cannot allow the hideous weight of emotion to explode through her, knowing it will be the most painful thing she's ever felt. So she chooses to feel nothing, simply blundering from the marsh to the Edge like she's drunk, stumbling over stones and twigs that she would normally have avoided with ease. Beside her is Tembovu in his elephant form, carrying the prone, limp body of her mother. That's the bit she finds so hard to believe - the mare that made her, birthed her, fed her, raised her, is just a corpse now. Just meat. Death has never affected her before, especially when she uses it as a vessel to fuel her shapeshifting magic, but she knows the finality of it now. Wherever her mother is, she's not in that empty husk of a body.

She carries Dominus' corpse herself. There is no way she is separating her mother from her long-time companion, not when she knows the abyss that would be left if anything happened to Ker. The lion's weight against her back makes her quiver with exertion, but she revels in each laboured step, knowing that she deserves the ache of every last one.

Finally she reaches the Edge. Her path takes her through the familiar territory, through trees and grass until she reaches the lush pastures that slope away to the sheer cliff. It is here that she chooses; here that seems an apt place to lay her mother to rest. With the dawn sunlight breaking across the cliffs and chasing away the last of the fog, illuminating every blade of grass in sharp relief, the yearling cannot think of anywhere more beautiful for Nyx to rest. She can look out to the endless sea on one side, or watch the herd go about their business on the other, and Oizys fights back a choking sob as she gently lowers Dominus' body to the ground. Ker quickly replaces the missing warmth of the lion's carcass, twining her beak around Oizys' onyx mane and offering comfort wherever she can.

A grave. She needs to dig a grave. She feels it should be her who digs, given that it was her who has caused all this, so she slowly reaches around and grabs one of the glass phials forged for her by the Glaziers. It is filled with bear's blood, and with a groan she swallows the viscous liquid and triggers the transformation. Bones snap audibly and each muscle rips as she shifts from filly into bear, and she shuts her eyes and revels in each ounce of agony as it sears through her.

As soon as a great grizzly bear stands where the gargoyle had done seconds before, she begins to dig. Her massive forepaws scrabble at the ground, the claws carving easily through the loamy soil and flicking out any errant pebbles in her path. Her shoulders soon scream for mercy and her forelegs ache with exertion, but she grits her sharp teeth against the pain and digs until she can't think of anything else but this physical punishment, this biblical task that she deserves to suffer from.

The journey to the Edge has never felt longer. Arakh knows he must stay strong for Esinakh - wherever she is, aching that he can't be with her - but it's so damn hard when he, too, has lost his mother. He can hardly believe that he is an orphan and not even near his first birthday yet, that he no longer has the silver's love or guidance to help him through the days. Both he and Esinakh don't rely on her for sustenance anymore, but they rely on her for so much more than that - affection, the gentle reassuring touch of muzzle to hip, life lessons, a mother's undying love that can never be replaced.

She loved them, raised them, visited them daily even when they left to the Throat. Now she's gone, and even with his sister at his side, the calf has never felt more alone.

He follows the small procession of misery, watching his mother's body jiggle in the tusks of Tembovu. How can she be gone? She was always so full of life...a warrior to the end, taken down in battle. He bleats softly, finding himself unwittingly following Oizys towards the lush pastures by the cliffs at the far side of the herdland. His initial anger at his older sister has faded to be replaced with an aching pit of grief, an unpluggable hole of emptiness and pain that he knows will never be filled. Despite her vulgar bravado, he senses that Oizys feels the same way, and the guilt at being the one to cause it should be enough punishment for her to carry with her without him adding more on top of it.

Arakh does not register surprise when his yearling sister transforms into a bear. She begins to dig, using her forepaws like spades to carve through the ground, and without thinking he moves to help. It feels right that the mare's children be the ones to dig her final resting place, the hole where she will spend her eternity. His hooves are nowhere near as effective as Oizys' claws, but he uses them to the best of his ability, scraping away pebbles and helping to clear the path for his sister's sharp talons.