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Silence settled over the room. The family just looked at each other for a few minutes. Nyxali felt as if they were all sharing some secret message that she couldn't hear. Each face was sober and stoic. No one would look at her.

Ysea leaned against her daughter and rested her head on Nyxali's shoulder. Oseeri and Mayana came over. Oseeri crouched by his youngest daughter's chair and took her two small paws in his two large ones. Mayana stood next to her with one paw on her other shoulder.

Nyxali noticed that her father was turning her paws over and rubbing them slightly. His head was bent over them as if studying them. His voice was husky, barely audible even in the silence, "I remember when you were born. So tiny. So perfect. So... fierce. You spat at me silently with your eyes closed." He choked out a feeble laugh. He looked up at her then.

Nyxali had never seen her father cry. He roared. He chased in hunt, in play. He rumbled and growled. He purred and smiled. The wet drops clinging too his soft fuzz looked out of place. He shifted her two paws into one of his and raised his free paw to her face. Nyxali rubbed her face against it as tears poured down her cheeks. Mayana collapsed and wrapped her arms around Nyxali. Ysea hugged Nyxali, too.

She was going away.

She knew it. Just like that. She was going away with Tchash and Scratch.

Her throat tightened. Her chest felt the great pressure of the yowl suppressed within it. Her body felt brittle, cold, and distant from the warm embraces encircling her. She closed her eyes and tried to shrink away, but they would not let her. They hugged her closer and pressed against her.

Nyxali could not ignore the love that pervaded her body. Images of their hopes for her passed in the darkness: Nxyali surrounded with good friends; a more human Nyxali bartering in a village; Nyxali cradling her own kittens as her loving mate hovered over her.

She did not open her eyes. She relaxed into their love and drank in deeply the scent of her family in this moment so that she could carry it with her where ever she would go.