Although Alysanne had apologized, she had not expected the dappled grey to ask about it. Really, she had expected her odd behaviour to be shrugged off, ignored even. There really was no explanation given for it, after all – just spacing out and being distracted by all that had occurred to her. She repeated the term used, mostly just out of complete surprise. “Upset?” Alysanne chided herself internally, it was not her habit to mope around and burden her sorrows on others. Surely everyone had better things to worry about and, while she was happy to listen to anyone else pour out their hearts with what was wrong – she rather avoided doing the same. She never wanted her presence to be an imposition on anyone else. “It’s… nothing.” Try as she might to shrug it off, the way her voice cracked of course gave her away – she did not truly think it was ‘nothing’. Perhaps the dappled mare would not have bothered to ask if she did not truly want to know, so with reluctance she summed up what had happened as casually as she could. “It’s just, my friends and I were attacked in our home and one of them is missing.” A story, she was sure, that could be related to by almost everyone in these caves.

She ached to think of Mikey out there still, alone and possibly infected. Of Kahlua and Brisa who she hoped were somewhere down here, safe, and all the others in Helovia who she had not yet met – she really wanted them all to have happier reasons for ending up in these caves. Having heard about the sickness in time, before anyone was hurt, for example.

The fact that she did not recognize the land that Hellä named did not surprise her, though it made her a little disappointed. When she had first arrived in Helovia, she had been delighted to discover that so many of the faces she came across had come from her previous homeland. But it would seem, and she should have expected this, that Nocturne was only a very small origin for all of the faces that surrounded her now.

And it made her sad, to see that bitterness at which ‘the shadowland’ was spoken. She wondered if what had taken Isilme was now here in Helovia, but something about the way that Hellä had spoken made her hesitant about inquiring any further – though she felt like she needed to say something. “Ah! I’ve never heard of Isilme. Though I suppose there’s a lot of places out there beyond my little world. I never realized how big the world was until I ventured here.” Her light-hearted smile returning as she spoke, marvelling in just how great it was that all these places existed and she had no idea! Conversation was easy, far easier than focusing on what was happening and what had happened.

Surely whatever was occurring on the surface would not last for long and they’d be back in their herdlands and everything would be the way it was before she left for Nocturne. Yes, that did seem very likely.

For now, though, she was happy to learn the name of her dappled companion – and her smile grew even more for this green-eyed mare was truly happy. She even said as much: “It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you, Hellä.”