Nate was awake in the early hours before dawn, when the moon still had its grip on the sky and the horzion faded only to deep blue. Dewy grass shuffed beneath his paws on their lonesome trek until even his thick wolven fur gave up the ghost and the chill of early spring seeped into his toes.

It was the coldest it had been since spring’s return — not enough to haunt the breath, but the hills, for their part, cloaked themselves in fog that gleamed under the face of Svnoyi Ehi Nvdo (the moon).

Nate stepped through it with only a vague kind of will steering him down deertrails. Ko-Ga followed.

Did you like her? Nate asked, after a while. …Eleanore. Her name like a phantom itself, the way it made him cold to utter.

Ko-Ga hopped into the limbs of a basswood tree, head tilting. ELeanore. His throat pulsed around the unpracticed word and he narrowed his eyes, Eleanore. A bit better.

Preening a ratty wing, the crow was uncharacteristically quiet for a while. Birds knew lots of things. But he didn’t know why Nate-Dog brought her up now. Nate-Dog had not spoken of her except in nightmares since waking.

Why ask?

Lip tugging, Nate shrugged like he carried a heavy weight in need of adjustment, and kept walking. You couldn’t tell me, before. I mean — not in exact words. I wondered what you thought about her.

The girl I loved.

The girl who loved me.

I remember how bad she wanted to make friends. Took it as some kind of challenge to win you over. He braced himself with a laugh. Even asked me what foods you liked, so she could keep the right treats.

Ko-Ga hadn't known this, and it softened him somewhat toward the woman, even if she'd consistently refused to offer him her shiny jewelry.

He pecked at the branch then lit after Nate to land in his fur, reciting the favored offerings, Peanuts. Bacon. Fish eyes.

Watching the cattle baron's daughter roll up her sleeves and help Nate gut channel cats on the riverbank was a favorite memory. Ko-Ga hadn't really thought she would do it.

Her mother scolded her for the grass stains and blood on her skirt, and Eleanore only laughed, haughty as an eagle, proud to serve the family and farmhands fish fry that night.

She'd cut her hand on the knife, too, and Nate had bound it in his red handkerchief. Ko-Ga realized that day his flockmate was in love.

You miss her.

Of course I do. Nate breathed sharply, and his chest felt tight. But I can't say I wish she was here, can I? That would mean— His worst nightmares come true.

…And what would she think of me, now. Picking up into a steady lope, Nate followed a meadow stream toward the lake.

He had a lot of folks to care about, these days. Spring had more than a few of them in mind for marriage. And Cecil…

Nate chewed the inside of his cheek, ears flattening. His shoulder ached in the cold.

We never got to say goodbye. I don't — even if it's how things are — I don't know how I can leave her behind. Feels like I'm betraying something. Whatever we had. What we hoped to be. Dead men aren't supposed to have regrets, y'know?

Ko-Ga was rearranging Nate's feathers, and listened with ponderous intent.

An awful sickness was building in Nate's chest. It feels sometimes like she's the one that died.

Ko-Ga gave a raspy warble.

Isn't that awful? I'm here, and she's — she's still off somewhere.

A wan laugh, Probably married. Doesn't think about me at all. If he let himself be honest, he knew that wasn't true. They were words meant to hurt himself. To make him feel better, about being forced to leave her behind. To kill something that couldn't be killed.

Tears were welling. I had went and hung all my hopes on her, and now — Teeth grit. Now I got new hopes, but the old ones just won't be put to rest.

Leaves me in a damn pickle. At the lakeshore, he sat on riverstones and watched moonlight smear through waterstained eyes across the surface. How do you grieve something like that without bein' the most selfish man alive?

Ko-Ga groomed Nate-Dog while he wept. An ugly, wracking thing. His perennial companion picked through fur for stickers and twigs and bugs, while the waves of strife worked themselves out.

Stubborn, stupid dogs! But Ko-Ga loved Nate-Dog for the fact that Nate-Dog loved. And mourning — well, it was part of loving. 

Though the crow had never taken a mate, he felt he understood. It was written in the hollows of his bones, his kind made their bonds for life. Elders talked of following lovers through lifetimes, to find each other again, and again! Birds knew of such things.

Eleanore was Nate's mate. It did not matter if Ko-Ga approved, because Nate had chosen her and she had chosen him, and there had been talk between them of building a nest.

She hadn't followed Nate-Dog, because he was taken before his time. He was reborn, because it was not his time! And Ko-Ga puzzled seriously over the pain his friend exposed.

What if Nate-Dog moved on, and someday Eleanore appeared? The jealousy! The shame!

What if he didn't, and denied himself the comfort of a new mate all his days? The loneliness! The sorrow!

And if he loved again, who could promise he would not lose them, too?

But Nate-Dog felt now all these things at once, before any of them had happened. As if they were all happening now, together. He would hang himself on hope and call the perversion justice. Maybe he even thought the men who'd killed him had some genuine right.

Nate-Dog was not a bird. He did not inherit the instincts of a winged-thing, and the marrow of wisdom was only earned for men and wolves through breaking of bones. When his heart bled, he could hear nothing except that frantic beating.

So Ko-Ga did not believe Nate-Dog would understand these observations, or that pecking at him would do any good. Even if Ko-Ga very much wanted to peck him.

Not selfish. The crow appraised with a simple shrug, hopping down to the riverside to look for tasty treats hidden in the shallows. Nate-Dog still have Ko-Ga, either way.

Tears fell as raindrops on the lapping shore and Nate tried to laugh through hitched inhales. Thanks, buddy. Crippled words, weak enough you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a dying man.

For a while that was the best Nate could manage. He watched his companion chase frogs and rubbed, over and over again, at the itch of tears between haphazard breaths. Everything hurt.

Ko-Ga, the only one who knew her, the only one who stayed knowing what it really meant to choose, offered solidity to lean on. By slow and halting sighs Nate exhausted himself into some kind of stalemate.

Moonlight on the water looked starker, now. There was only the barest hint of green to the horizon. He exhaled.

And when the first notes of a memorial chant welled up in his throat, they were halting and uncertain. Eduda taught him how as a child, and Nate had tucked it into his heart to hide there, certain it could never be repeated by someone like himself. Only held onto, white-knuckled, like the redbird in the stories.

Now it rose higher, louder, rippling off the lake to reach out towards that great Tree on the distant shore, and the mountains beyond it, and light began to stretch into the sky —

He didn't know if he sang for Eleanore or himself, if it was dirge or desperate pleading. But though tears fresh stained the fur of his cheeks, it was a song.

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If one toon wants to make a cameo at the end just overhearing some of this from the shadows, feel free! And/or if someone wants a followup thread where they come out to investigate the singing, lmk :3