Volterra.

Her amber eye closes as she focuses on the thickening tendril of thought between her and her companion. From the back of her mind, where Mongrel and her are tied together, there is a hazy image coming into sharp clarity -- her son. At first, through Mongrel's foreign eyes, she almost mistakes him for Tyradon. His body has swelled and flourished into something sculpted and hard, thick brawn and chiselled architecture stitched together into dark hardiness and heavy sinew. It's only her instinct -- as mother, despite their time apart, that indicates her to his true nature. She wouldn't couldn't ever forget the happy shifts to his tilted face, his slow cunning, his dedication and determination; everything that made him him, and hers.

Deep, deep within her chest, in the corners of her perplexing heart where she does her best to ignore it, she fears Volterra now, but not for his flourishing strength, but for her failure, for her inadequacies, for her inepititude. When he comes to her (and she can see him, speeding over soil with Mongrel flitting along at his galloping hooves) will he bow his head, will he submit? Or will he snarl and snap?

Soon enough, she does not need Mongrel's eyes to see that black shape on the horizon, growing in her line of sight; does not need his nose to smell her son on the breeze; does not need his ears to hear the thunder of his hoofbeats and the crashing tides of his breathing.

The World Eater stands, all pointed angles and scarred gladiator, poised and impassive. Her jaw is stiff and unyielding, her eyes slitted and jaded, and her neck curled, body language all decidedly dominating. Inwardly, she is crumpled and indisposed, coiled and desperate, lost and full of longing for what will never be. My son. My son. Volterra; with her eyes, with his father's body, and who knew whose heart?

Mother.
The boy stallion steps forwards, head reaching towards hers. The wolf doesn't move, but accepts his gentlemanly gesture nonetheless. She doesn't muster any ill will for him (much as she wishes she could); he had done what she had asked, after all.

"Where's your sister?" Her gaze scuttles away from him, skipping back to her companion; Mongrel rumbles dissatisfactorily in the back of her head, tails twitching outwardly. "... do you not travel with one another?" Acid bites into the cut of her voice, insidious cruelty working across vowels and consonants both.