Work Text:
It’s freezing. The wind that stirs the leaves out here just at the edge of safety is unnatural. Tula stopped shivering long, long ago.
She runs single-mindedly, absent of any emotion. Every minute eats away at her. The fear that she’s carried her whole life, that’s kept her safe, has abandoned her at its pinnacle. Some of the smaller animals she hunts reach a moment when they realize the level of danger they’re in and freeze, collapsing to the ground as though already dead. Maybe her fear has done this, too.
At the edge of her world, she finally stops. The unnatural wind rips through her fur, the only sound on the landscape despite the earlier crack of thunder. Still, there are no clouds in the sky. To continue onward goes against every one of her carefully-honed instincts. The signs of danger are everywhere. Unfortunately, her common sense was left with Geoffrey. There’s nothing to hold her back anymore. She surges forward, past the threshold.
Before her lies a meadow, flat, exposed. It is preternaturally still, a sea of white. She will not deliver Geoffrey here.
For her people, mourning is a complicated thing. When someone passes, there’s limited time or energy to do anything about it. If a stoat is lucky, they’ll die beneath the sky, already prepared to return to the Blue which bore them. If they’re truly lucky, a family member will deliver them to the water so that they may rejoin the cycle more quickly. Afterwards come the words of sympathy, the offers of aid, the extension of time to grieve. It’s expected that friends and family will remain mindful of the needs of the burrow and continue on with their lives after the few days they take. No stoat has traveled this far for one already fallen, and especially not on this little word. Of course, Tula is not like other stoats.
She races the meadow’s edge for many minutes, weak sun bleeding across its surface but failing to warm her, before she sees him. His fur is matted and stained, his legs sticking up at odd angles. Beneath the numbness is a rising nausea; further still, a muted sort of rage. It’s inconceivable that this could be her Geoffrey—the ambition to her idleness, the pragmatism to her impulsivity. Buried, the rage howls. Whichever manner of beast has taken her husband, her children’s father, she vows she will destroy. But first, the matter of her dearest.
She can’t afford to be delicate. There’s not enough time. The threat of the thunder’s return hangs over her head, waiting to strike the killing blow. With the sort of violence usually used for putting down rabbits, Tula clamps her jaws over the back of his neck and diverts from the meadow. She fights through heavy snow, bounding across it as it gives under her paws. The stench of old blood and an unnatural ozone fill her nose and mouth as she heaves in huge lungfuls of air, trying desperately to press through the fatigue. Her body is pushed to its limit as she lunges over roots, seeking out her path home. She hardly remembers where she’s come from, frantic in her surge to protect what has already been lost.
Behind her, the light wanes. Something skitters away deeper in the forest, perhaps knowing better than to interfere with her frenetic, dedicated movements. She jolts every time Geoffrey’s body impacts the frozen earth.
“Nearly there, love,” he soothes her. His phantom touch strokes across her head, behind her ear.
I know, she thinks, I know.
The ozone follows them, but the thrum of danger has died down. It is replaced by music, something lighter, gentler. She follows the sound with a narrow-minded focus.
The brook is partially frozen, water burbling away merrily under huge rafts of ice. When she wades into it, she hardly registers the shock of cold. Rust bleeds away from the both of them, collecting in the debris caught on the edges of the floes. She stands for a moment, the two of them silhouetted in the dying light. The first of the small, bright spots in the sky has appeared. She fixes her gaze upon it.
With considerable effort, Tula loosens her jaw. At once, the burden she carries is released. Warmth washes across her face. She turns back to shore.
Behind her, the brook sings merrily on. Her husband has returned to the Blue. The stars rise over a forest of frost.
Later, beneath their guiding light, Tula freezes to death.
__________________________________________
The burrow is still, holding its breath in the early morning before the bustle of activity and movement that will come with preparing for the daily hunt. Beside her, Jaysohn and Lila sleep peacefully, limbs and noses twitching. Breathing raspily across the room, her mother is no more awake. Tula isn’t sure why she’s risen, but her instincts haven’t failed her yet. As far as she’s concerned, it’s never too early to start preparing for the kids to get up.
As silently as possible, she extricates herself from underneath her children. She carefully tucks them deeper into the pile of moss, making sure to keep them as warm as possible before she moves on. In her chest, her heart beats a weak, thready rhythm.
Next on the docket is food. She checks their stores—enough for today, but she’ll have to find more soon. It will be the coldest part of the season in a few more turns of the moon, so going out with the hunting party is imperative. She makes a mental note of it, then moves on.
It’s difficult, still, without Geoffrey. Most of Tula is frozen with him, washed away like rust on the water. The rest, she’s taken great pains to bury deep, deep under duty and devotion to her children. Her heart beats now for them. It stretches her somewhere beyond herself and her grief. If this is how she has to go on, she will always, always choose it.
As though they can hear her thoughts, Tula catches the sounds of uneven paws scrabbling over the earth behind her, the only warning she gets before she’s being tackled by her two greatest bundles of joy.
“Mom! Mom! Jaysohn bit me,” Lila whines, “he woke me up even though you said to try to sleep all night long this time!”
“Did not!” The offending party cries, whirling around on her. “You’re lying; mum, she’s lying! I only woke her up ‘cause you were awake and I wanted to come help!”
Tula’s chest flares with warmth. “You did perfectly Lila; I appreciate that you tried. Jaysohn, how would you feel if your sister woke you up while you were sleeping?”
Jaysohn drags his paws beneath him, sulky. “She wouldn’t, ‘cause she never wakes up before me. And I’d like it ‘cause I want to help you!”
“I want to help you too, mom! I want to help more than Jaysohn does!” Lila cries out, shoving into her brother, who squalls in offense. Tula gently picks up the both of them before they can start tumbling across the floor.
“How about we both try to be considerate of one another’s sleep, and we can both help mom equally?” She’ll never reprimand them for being kids. As far as she cares, they’re allowed to be for as long as they’d like.
“‘Kay,” they agree reluctantly, temporary truce established. Tula tries not to sigh too obviously.
“Now, do you want breakfast first, or do you want to come with me while I talk some business with the other members of the burrow?”
Her kids regard one another. “Business,” Lila says at the same time as Jaysohn’s “breakfast”. It doesn’t take any kind of special mothering instincts to smell the fight brewing from a mile away.
“Here’s what we’re going to do: how about we have a snack now, then we can have the rest of our food after I go talk to who I need to?”
“Fine,” Jaysohn says. Lila nods, overwhelmed and eager.
Tula cuts into the last of their stores of jerky, breaking off a piece for each of them. “What do we say?” She prompts.
“Thanks, mom,” her children chorus. Satisfied, she watches them tuck in. She makes no move to eat herself; since the long cold, she hasn’t been moved to eat the way she used to. Sometimes, she can almost believe she’s forgotten what hunger feels like.
“You’re not gonna have some?” Lila asks, ever observant.
“Not right now,” she lies, “maybe later.”
There’s a pause where Tula wonders if she’s about to be caught out and forced to explain, before Lila returns to scarfing down her jerky, seemingly placated by her answer. Jaysohn is finishing his off with a dedication that will make for good hunting instincts someday. Tula’s chest swells with fondness.
“We’re going to go see Big Walmer,” she explains as they lick the last bits from their paws and whiskers. “I need to speak to him about saving up enough food for winter.”
“Can I go hunting?” Jaysohn begs, leaping around her. “I’m really good at it, I bet I could beat up a whole squirrel!”
“Yeah, um, and could I- we could, he’s really good,” her elder says, tripping over her words in her eagerness to support her brother, “and we could be really out of the way and we could help!”
“Sweetie, thank you, I think you’re both wonderful and going to make fantastic hunters,” Tula begins patiently, “but it’s just not safe for you yet. In a few more cycles you can start coming with me and your grandma, how about that?”
The kids groan. “Not grandma,” Jaysohn whines.
“Not me what?”
They’ve woken Ava, clearly. Tula takes a deep breath. “I was just explaining to the children that maybe sometime soon we can practice hunting with them,” she interjects smoothly.
Her mom’s brow furrows in consternation. “Hrmph. Well we’re not taking them anywhere looking like that.”
Tula suppresses a sigh. “Like what, mom?” She takes a moment to survey her children. No obvious fleas, the average amount of dirt, a few twigs—it’s about the control for her mother more than any real concern over their appearances.
“Well, like a mess! What, were they raised in a tree?” She clicks her tongue in disapproval, reaching out to snag a grandchild by the wrist. Tula doesn’t see any clear way out of it.
“Alright, mom, if I promise you that you can groom all of us to your heart’s content when we get back, will you let me run and have a word with Big Walmer about the hunt before you get started?”
Ava doesn’t look like she’s about to budge. “You’re going to see Walmer like that? Absolutely not. You know, he’s a real strong stoat, a true provider.”
“Sure, mom.”
“And he knows how to take care of a warren. Did you know he took down a whole rabbit himself the other day?”
“Yes, mom, I know.”
Ava makes a noise of approval, finally catching hold of Jaysohn, who has been writhing and tumbling to avoid her grip. “Well, just something to think about,” she says vaguely.
“I’m clean grandma, I’m clean already!” Jaysohn cries, squirming desperately to try to escape. “It’s no fair, Lila’s dirty! She cheated!”
“Your grandma’s going to clean you both,” Tula says exhaustedly, “it doesn’t matter if your sister’s cheated. And you’re both going to be good and well-behaved for her, right?”
Lila and Jaysohn look deeply conflicted. “I mean—yeah, mommy, but we don’t have to stay here, right? While you go talk and everything around the warren?”
Tula doesn’t want to lie to her daughter. “We’re burning daylight, sweetie. I have to go see him before the sun gets too high. But you’ll have a good time with Grandma, won’t you?”
Ava begins licking over Jaysohn’s head with a rough, sandpaper tongue. Jaysohn cries out. “No! You can’t just leave us here, you promised!”
Tula’s traitorous, still-beating heart pangs. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll be back before you know it,” she soothes. “Maybe you can work on your jump while I’m gone?”
Jaysohn pouts, clearly displeased. Lila looks no happier. “Can we go on a walk later then? Please, please, please?” she asks.
“Sure, we can do that, sweetheart.”
Barely placated, her youngest stops struggling against his grandmother, slumping to the ground in defeat. Lila looks on the verge of saying something more, but bites her tongue. Something strains against where Tula has buried it deep, deep in her stomach.
“You’ll hardly even notice I’m gone,” she promises, half-apology. “And we’ll have a nice, long walk when I get back. Okay?”
“Okay,” they chorus, sulky. Tula hesitates a moment, watching them. Jaysohn won’t meet her gaze.
She turns, swift on her feet, and ducks out of the den. There really isn’t time to waste, and the sooner she gets this over with, the sooner she gets back to her kits. Her feet pound familiar lines into the packed soil of the Red Warren as she twists through its tunnels. Making sure Jaysohn and Lila are fed is her highest priority. Their hurt, unfortunately, cannot be.
She stews briefly in her guilt about sacrificing her children to her mom’s incessant nagging, but it gives way almost immediately to her relief. Something pangs in her every time Jaysohn or Lila ask to be taken out to hunt. They don’t need to be there for her conversation with Big Walmer; Blue knows they would start getting ideas. In the den, she can protect them. Out there, there’s so little she can do.
She shakes off her thoughts like errant drops of water. As long as she’s around, there will be no need for them to hunt. She’ll make sure of it.
__________________________________________
In Tula’s defense, a bear full of chipmunks is hard to predict. Flanks heaving, staring wild-eyed at its slumped form, half-expecting it to start moving again, she thinks that making sure of her children’s safety just got a whole lot more difficult. Nothing in the forest has ever truly been predictable, Geoffrey was proof enough of that, but between the dust and the bear… Tula needs a minute.
She doesn’t get one.
Curled up beneath its body, it’s a fight to get the kids to sleep, despite how clearly exhausted they are. She does her best to separate and corral them into place, Jaysohn to her left, Lila to her right, but it takes several long minutes for them to drop into any sort of slumber. Even then, it’s not restful; Jaysohn’s limbs twitching, spasming like he’s still fighting the chipmunks in his dreams. Lila’s breathing is quick, shallow, as though there is something she is trying and failing to escape. Tula resigns herself to grabbing the few minutes of rest she can get between them.
To her surprise, it’s not her kits who keep her from it, but her sister’s tossing and turning. Tula can’t help but notice that Thorn is absent. Something in her twinges.
“Do you want to scooch over onto the moss more?” She mumbles, struggling to keep her eyelids open.
Viola’s movement doesn’t cease. “No, I’m just not…” she mutters something to herself, trying to come up with the right words. “When you had your—” she hesitates again.
Tula pries her eyelids open with considerable effort. “Oh, we’re gonna talk?”
“Yeah, we’re gonna talk.” Viola sounds resolute, despite whatever’s bothering her. She leans in over Jaysohn, narrowly avoiding his swinging paws.
“So I… I’m freaking out. I think something big is going to change for me, and it’s something that I thought I could delay a little bit longer, but I think the time is now.” She looks desperate, as scared as Tula, but there’s something else in her expression. Something awoke in all of them in that bear. Viola’s eyes shine with it.
“I think the rabbit’s in the hole, you know what I mean?” Her voice is strained, her expression willing Tula to understand.
It takes a second for the flash of understanding to hit. Tula untangles herself from her children and wipes the exhaustion from her eyes.
“You’re starting… now?”
Viola’s voice is hushed, reverent, resolute. Unshakeable. “You’re the only one who knows.”
Tula gazes out between the legs of the bear. Her little sister is pregnant. The wind scatters leaves across the ground in front of them, tumbling one over the other, chasing each other to some invisible goal. In her periphery, she vaguely notices the bear’s fur rippling.
She feels, twined within her, an incredible fear and swelling, abundant joy. Her younger sister is going to be such a phenomenal, patient mother. She imagines little nieces and nephews running around, scampering overtop of one another, maybe over Lila and Jaysohn. She imagines her younger sister, resting, glowing, buoyed by a new joy. Tula knows firsthand the way the world stretches and shrinks simultaneously when you have kits. Viola will become more than herself, and Tula pictures her filling the space. It’s as natural as breathing. She almost can’t believe it hasn’t happened until now.
At the same time, her stomach plummets. She can’t believe it’s happening now. She tries to come up with some place, any place, an expectant mother—her baby sister—could possibly raise newborn stoats and comes up empty, empty, empty. What are they going to do?
They need to find somewhere safer, they need to keep moving. Her sister doesn’t have very much control, and soon none of them will have any control at all. She turns to tell her sister this, but her eyes fall on Viola and suddenly, she understands—Viola already knows. Of course she does. Right now, she doesn’t need the fear; she’s living it every minute. Right now, she needs Tula to be her support, her big sister.
Tula moves through joy to panic to grief to resolution. It is what it is. They’re going to make it through. They have to.
“I feel kind of bad,” Viola interrupts her train of thought, breath turning to mist in the cooling air, “because I have someone to do this with, and—”
“Thorn’s going to be a great father,” Tula interjects. She doesn’t need to hear it.
“But you’re doing it by yourself, and I feel bad,” her younger sister insists. “Without me having mine, I can help you when you need it, you need an extra hand. What if I get so busy that I’m not the same kind of sister I was?”
“I think it’s… I think it’s beautiful, and I think…” She trails off, trying not to remember the nights she stayed up alone, kits crying at her feet, wishing Geoffrey were there with her. She stifles the recalled feeling of defeat, the impossibility of raising her children alone to adulthood, somewhere deep inside. “You don’t have to worry about me, Viola.” There’s almost enough conviction there to fool herself.
“I’m always going to worry about you.”
For a second, the both of them simply exist together, cradled in the bear’s shadow, the entire world unrecognizable about them. Things are changing now. They’ve changed already. Tula digs deep for some comfort she can offer.
“If it’s your time now, it’s your time, and… the forest is enormous. It’s dangerous, it’s full of monsters, ah da da da da,” she makes a fumbling motion with her paws, “but what happens in the best of circumstances? We find a burrow by a sunlit, clear stream, and there’s never any monsters, never any predators, and one day, you pass.”
Viola’s jaw drops a little. Tula’s losing her. “You can’t guarantee safety,” she says, earnest, desperate for her to understand, “you can’t guarantee that you get to hold onto everybody forever.” She’s learned it, body, mind, and soul, frozen into a snowbank. She can’t let Viola learn the same way.
“What you do get to choose is who you love, and those kids are going to be so lucky to have you as their mom, and you’ll just see, everything, it will be beautiful. Everything will come into focus, and you don’t have to delay your life out of a sense of responsibility to me. I will be fine.” She would never forgive herself if Viola sacrificed any part of her life for Tula.
The conversation with her sister wends around their paws, carries them from one side of the bear to the other. She looks into its glassy eyes, uncovered, unseeing, and knows that she’s left something unfinished. Viola is on the same page, the both of them pushed by unspoken agreement into movement.
They gather the flowers together in silence. Viola arranges them around its snout, pointed to where the sun will rise in the morning. Tula doesn’t even have to search to find the words.
“I hope the path to wherever you’re going is soft and full of flowers,” she says, and she can imagine it vividly. She lets the vision pour out of her like water over a pelt. “I hope the sun is warm, and I hope there are places to rest. I know that you can’t talk like stoats can talk, but I’m sure somewhere out there, there’s someone who wanted to say goodbye to you, and I hope that they get a chance to do that.”
The wind plays with the petals around its snout. There’s no chance they could move it anywhere else at their size, let alone to the river. This is the best she can do. She turns her gaze skyward. She hopes, somewhere, it gets the kind of peace she was never afforded. Wherever it is, she hopes it’s at rest.
Nothing else to be said, Viola and Tula make their quiet way back to their family. Just before they get there, Tula stops and turns to her sister.
“I love you, and I’m so happy for you.” When she says it, she means it.
That night, when she can’t sleep, she tries to pretend it has nothing to do with where Viola and Thorn are curled up around one another. Their breaths come steady, easy, their noses nearly touching where they intertwine. Viola will never have to raise her kits alone. She will always have support, always somebody she can rely on, always another body to keep them safe. Her little sister stirs slightly, turns further onto her side. Tula closes her eyes.
__________________________________________
“Sweetie, wake up.”
Sybil is not much older than her own kits, barely old enough to have a job in the warren, and her mangled body should never have been the sacrifice Tula’s family had to make to get here. Sybil’s curiosity and bravery should never have been punished. Tula outstretches her hands and lets the blue flow through her. Sybil will not die today. Not for them. Not for this.
It’s different, Tula thinks, the way she uses the Blue. Her people have always had the light, of course, but seeing what it can do to the stoats here, what it has done, she’s finally beginning to understand the unfathomable magnitude of power it offers. She can only guess that it’s been afforded to them through the substance beneath their feet. These Great Stoats—they seem to gain their powers through touching it, absorbing it, using it physically. But when Tula harnesses her powers, heals or harms, she always, always thinks of her family.
Her heart beats once, twice, thrumming in her chest with a heat borne of her love and her duty for her kits. Her powers don’t come from the blue beneath. Of course her powers come from her children, she thinks, watching them defend themselves and one another with a strength that could only come from their father. They’re her whole world. And if these Great Stoats try to kill them one more time, she’s going to find out just how great they really are.
In the corner of her eye, Tula sees Sybil’s neck unbreak violently; she scrambles to her feet and ducks for cover. Good. Tula’s got something bigger to deal with.
There is, of course, the immediate, largest threat. A huge, hunkering, slavering wolf made mostly of meat and gristle: this, Tula can handle. She must. There’s no other choice. She wonders, approaching it, how the Great Stoats must have made it obey. She wonders what it must be like to have let yourself be hurt, be changed beyond recognition for somebody, only for them to leave you. She wonders about having a life both entirely your own and suddenly purposeless. And she extends her hands out, and offers herself in her entirety to heal it.
It leans its head into her palm, licks her with a tongue, and her heartbeat steadies out. This is something she knows, this is something she can do. This is only one battle in the war to come, and she will do her best, at every opportunity she can, to meet pain with kindness. Her attention shifts to the rest of the room, new ally at her back.
Jaysohn goes flying, Lila ducking for cover. Her mother is back in the fray, but something about her is visibly wrong after being thrown directly into the Blue, and there’s no time to discuss it. Tula’s family has been put under watch, lied to since day one, manipulated and made to feel afraid, excluded, hunted. And then, before her eyes, they strike Viola.
There is blue burned into the back of Tula’s eyelids, flashing bright every time she blinks. The vindication she feels at being right about this burrow is buried under a tsunami of fear, washing out every other emotion like so many grains of sand. Her footing is unstable, her breathing uncontrolled. For so long, Tula thought that the enemies her husband feared were outside, far away. Now she knows they are far closer.
These stoats, great as they may claim, are fools. They have tried to appeal to her humanity, her motherhood; they speak as though the warren are their children. Tula could laugh. Parents never put themselves first.
“You’ve stood here for generations,” she says, emotionless, surrounded by blood and carnage. Perfectly avoidable. A pity. “Was that on four legs or two?”
The silence speaks for itself. Yeah, that’s about what she thought. “The humans are already here.”
When Tula rips Speaker’s throat out, she feels no remorse. The old Tula might have killed out of rage, furious that anybody dare threaten her kits, her little sister. She hasn’t been that Tula for a long, long time, but the panic she feels, whites of her eyes flaring, is far more potent.
Blood soaks down her fur. There is no relief, no come-down for her to relax into. An immediate threat has been neutralized, perhaps, but the larger one presses in. The humans will return, and there is nothing she can do. She has nothing left to turn to. If she gave it any more thought, it would eat away at her until nothing remained. She has done everything, everything right, and Lila and Jaysohn are less safe than ever. There is nowhere she can run, nowhere she can hide. Nowhere she takes them will ever keep them from harm. And if she weren’t living to protect them, to give herself for their safety, what would she be? The thought, too horrible to bear: if she is no longer their mother, who is she?
__________________________________________
Tula stands before her family, the most exposed she’s ever been. She’s worked hard to offer little detail, remove herself from the portrait entirely, but they know now what they didn’t before. She’s been a liar far longer than she’s been dead.
Hands extended, she faces her mother. She’s been pushing herself away for so long that the thing stirring inside her is unfamiliar. How long has she been burying herself in the snow? Ignited by the tremendous fear her family has just experienced, years’ worth of sorrow reaches a boiling point, and she snaps.
“I came to you in the winter,” she tells Ava, voice steady, low, accusatory. “I came to you when he was gone, with no idea what to do. I said, ‘Geoffrey’s dead. I found him in the snow by the meadow.’ Do you remember what you said to me?”
Tula knows. She remembers. It would be impossible to forget.
The trek home had been the worst of her life. She hardly registered any of it, numb, head down, placing one foot in front of the other like anything else would kill her. It would’ve. It did.
She’d gotten home, fur frozen over, ice crusted to her whiskers, unable to shiver, and asked her mother what to do. And meeting her grief-dulled eyes, she’d said to her eldest daughter: “you should’ve been there with him.”
There was a long silence then, when Tula’s mind couldn’t seem to stop taking in information: the way the wind sounded blowing snow overtop the warren, the pale roots hanging from the wall, the overlapping voices of her people just beyond their den. There was nothing left to give way inside her, just new grief compiling into new grief. And so she turned and left.
Her feet dragged through the snow, turning to slush where it bumped up against the partially-frozen brook (why hadn’t she been there?). Her eyes burned, nose and paws long since gone numb in the cold (he should’ve never gone alone). The sound of her heartbeat pummelled against her ears, relentless, agonizing in its consistency (he never would’ve gone any other way). The disbelief melted, gave way to the roaring, all-consuming sorrow (nobody was there for him). Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should’ve been there.
Despite herself, Tula had found herself wishing, desperately, for a little bit of time between each heartbeat. Just a little bit of rest (nobody is here for her). Just one moment of silence (nobody is coming). She stumbled, slowed, came to a stop. Just one moment to herself, any moment.
Tula laid down.
It felt good. Like sinking into water in the time of longest sun, when the bushes bent themselves over under the weight of their berries and the insects sang a rattling din into the night. It was soothing, peaceful, the first moment of rest she had gotten since Geoffrey’s death. She had almost cried with the relief of it.
She was so tired. It felt so good. It felt so good. It felt so good. Her children needed her. It felt—what was that? Her heart slowed. It felt good. Her children needed her. Lila and Jaysohn—duty. Responsibility. Her children.
Too quickly, her heartbeat sped up, her life returned to her. There was no rest here. There was no rest anywhere. Duty, Tula understood, meant there would never be rest again.
Jaysohn and Lila were sleeping in the burrow, still unaware that their father would never be tucking them in again. She couldn’t leave them. She wouldn’t.
Suffused with blue light, heart beating steadily, chest warm, she found herself understanding: she was giving up her rest for the power to protect her family. There wasn’t even a choice; she would’ve done it again a hundred times over, a thousand. Lila and Jaysohn needed her. In the end, it was as simple as that.
When she got back to the warren, late enough that the sun was starting to stain the horizon under the stars, she slipped quietly back between her children. Nobody stirred. Don’t worry, she would’ve said, had anybody been awake to check on her. The hunt went longer than expected. I’m fine.
Suspended now over the greatest quantity of Blue that Tula has ever seen, her mother as dead as she is, her whole family seems to hold its breath. Waiting for her, Tula realizes. They’re here. They have her back. Well, fine then. She finally has something to say to her mother.
“You are so obsessed with power and obsessed with control that you have taken this whole family and demanded that every bad thing that has ever happened to us was our fault!” She leans in, digs her claws into the stone. Ava looks frightened—good. Tula isn’t done. “If you were really strong, you would be able to be sad when bad things happen instead of demanding that there was something we could’ve done. It is a big, big forest and we are just stoats.”
She coils back into herself, panting. Her mother’s face crumples, something beginning to give way. Tula isn’t sure Ava has ever been allowed to be weak or small. She’s never had to become comfortable with her sorrow, never fully inhabited it in the same way Tula did after Geoffrey died. She glances over at Viola.
She owes this to her sister: that she never be made to feel small for her grief. That she be allowed to mourn and not be told that it’s her fault. Tula understands her mom, feels for her. She understands that a lot of her moving through Kenji’s death was carrying a veneer of strength, burying herself in it, molding herself around it. Tula knows a whole lot about turning yourself into something greater than yourself in the face of loss. It’s also unacceptable, and if Tula has to say something to spare Viola the same hurt, she’ll do it.
Ava is stunned into silence. “Well I-,” she fights for the words, face trembling, voice thick. “I have to believe that there’s always something you can do, because if there’s not, then… well, we just really don’t have anything to rely on, do we, and you all were relying on me, and, and when—just like Ken, Ken was relying on me too, and I failed him. I failed him. I… It could’ve been me, it should’ve been me there. I just had to- well, I-”
Tula can count on one paw the number of times she’s seen her mother cry. When her sweet, brilliant Lila leans in, promising her “no, you didn’t. You didn’t fail him,” Tula adds another to the list.
“I don’t- I don’t like thinking that there are things that are out of our hands,” Ava chokes out, the most vulnerable Tula’s ever seen her.
She can’t help it. She breaks. She turns herself away from the group, lets Thorn’s words wash over her like a warm rain.
“Be that as it may, and I know this is probably not what everyone wants to hear, but things are in our hands to some degree now. We have made a choice. This warren is without its leader, and we now have to rise to the occasion.”
He’s right. Tula focuses up, doing what she does best and putting her grief away. Rest and peace once more come second to her responsibility to her family’s safety. Tula will think about it later. She has a warren to protect.
__________________________________________
In the end, she registers very little of saving the world. For something that completely upturns life for every stoat as she knows it, she's present for a negligible amount of the fight with Phoebe. The end result, however, doesn't change: nothing will ever be the same again. She finds herself shockingly pleased by the notion.
When she returns to the meadow, it is teeming with life. The grass towers above her, rustling with the movement of countless insects and the small mammals who root through the soil in their pursuit. She makes no move to chase them. There is plenty of food at the warren. She doesn’t have to worry about where her next meal comes from. Now, Tula is afforded the luxury of time.
She settles herself beneath the shade of a tree and watches the sun trace its lazy path down to the horizon, embraced as she is by the red earth at its edge. The crickets and cicadas kick up their hum. A wind rushes through her fur, stirring up the grass in susurration.
“Hello, Geoffrey,” she whispers. “There’s so much to tell you.”
Her mind flickers across it: her daughter, studying under the tutelage of humans, set to earn some collection of letters Tula still truly doesn’t understand. Her son’s desire to best humans at jumping, which their family will have to travel a long way for. Her mother’s efforts to engage with her daughters in new ways, her management of their new burrow. Her sister’s beautiful daughters, Geoffrey and Kenji, and son, Rosie. Thorn’s continued collaboration with the humans to keep them safe.
“You were right,” she says, chest splitting open. For so long, she carried so much resentment, that Geoffrey left her to raise their children alone. She had been living with the knowledge, buried away, that she came back out of duty to her family, while he had not. For a long time, she had blamed him. Her hurt melts away now. She hopes he’s resting. She hopes he already knows. “You were right about so many things.”
She sits for a long moment. “They get to have new stories now. Lila’s going to be a PhD—you might’ve known what that meant. Jaysohn’s going to a place called Olympics—you might’ve known that, too.” She takes a deep breath of the warm evening air. It smells like rain tomorrow.
“I have so much free time now,” she confesses. “They don’t need me anymore. I used to think it was duty, but I’m all out of duty.” Her heart beats on. “I think it’s curiosity now. I get to find out what tomorrow looks like.”
The sun continues to sink, steadily, beneath the earth to rest. Just as stoats do, Tula thinks fondly.
“I love you,” she says.
There is no response. Above her, the first stars twinkle into being.
Tula gets to her feet. Under their early light, she navigates back to Last Bast. She raises her nose to the sky one last time, then ducks in. It’s time for her to sleep. She has a full life left to live tomorrow.