Slightly preoccupied with the wolf as he was, he didn't notice Aylin's erstwhile confusion. With his gaze still on the surroundings he returned the bump with a small, distracted smile. As an animal of flight instincts, the presence of a predator commanded him to be wary - to run, or be eaten. Beneath his skin, he was ready, nerves tingling and muscles taut. Lena's voice rolled through his memories, and how she believed the wolf-thing to be harmless: was she right, or was it just her misguided kindness? It was hard to fight down the powerful notion that the wolf would spring upon him in an attack, yet he held his ground, slightly gentled by Aylin's attempt to cajole the creature out. The child was wise; if she, too, believed it harmless, perhaps it was? Or, it was just some mare thing that would get them all killed one day...

She came out of the bushes almost at once, the only delay being her slipping through the tangle of branches, rustling them in her wake like waves upon a sea. She was smaller than he remembered, perhaps of a height with the filly when she walked upon all four like that. It also, eerily enough to the suspicious stallion, made her look all the more lupine. "I mean no harm..." Those words, again - perhaps they were true, then? Mauja's high head came down a fraction, and he let out a shuddering breath. Why was he even trying to shed some tension? Did he want the beast to lull him into a false sense of security, so he'd be easier prey? And what about Aylin, and Tallis? He glanced at the filly, but she didn't seem disturbed. Perhaps this wolf was different from her kin, then - while the wolves of Helovia were by no means primitive, they followed a different set of laws, different urges, different instincts. This one, she was - different, apparently. Larger, too, elongated somehow, even though she sat neatly out in the moonlight, fur tipped in silver. Her gaze traveled his beloved forest, but it seemed to hold no hunger, merely something akin to sadness. "I wanted to see if I could do something." Well, this was certainly the first time a large wolf told him it wanted to help. Owlishly he blinked, not sure what to make of it all. She looked at him with suspicion, but could he fault her for it, when he regarded her equally wary? No.

"The Sun God decided to pitch a fit and burn it down," he told her wearily, before sighing again. "Earth and Moon sped up the healing process a couple of weeks back." He felt awkward, ill at ease, out of place - with only Aylin, the moonchild, it would've been different. He could've told her welcome, laughed, been playful, shown her around, but the wolf... What to do with her? She was not of their hierarchy and certainly did not follow their rules - but, he hardly attempted to drive out each bear that walked his land, or drove the deer from his glades. They coexisted by the difference of their lifestyle, but the wolf challenged all of that by not belonging entirely in neither. Looking more tired than suspicious now, Mauja sighed again. "What are you, wolf?" he asked quietly. 'Who' would've, perhaps, been less rude, but he was afraid that question would only give him a name, and not an explanation as to her being's nature. Which laws did she follow, by which pattern did she sleep and hunt - why was she straying so far from her pack? She was the only of her kind he'd seen in Helovia, so why was she here alone? Now that his paranoia that she'd eat someone up in front of his eyes had settled down, curiosity bombarded him with a thousand questions.

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