The familiar shade of the Threshold fell across my back in a spattering of deep brown and faded black. As I moved once more into the comfortable silence of Helovia, I left behind me all of the noise and chaos from the worlds beyond. Twice now, I had spent my nights beneath an open sky too far from the quiet of what I considered home. There was something exhilarating in the object of being completely and utterly alone; you could hear more, see more. Besides, the circumstances that I’d left behind had grown too large and overwhelming for me to bear. Or perhaps it was just that I’d found that I couldn’t yet face them, despite the fact that those days seemed too far away and too hazy to recall anymore. “Forget them,” Romul tried softly while stalking lightly alongside me. I glanced down at the wolf with a half-hearted smile and nodded loosely. He had always been my voice of reason and that hadn’t changed since our leave, but there was something distant in the way he regarded our return. His golden stare was fixed against the trodden path ahead and I could tell he was mildly dismayed. I was tempted to run my muzzle along the thick, white scruff that formed a sharp triangle at his back, but refrained in hopes of giving him enough time to once again adjust. Too many times I had asked him to change his path while favoring my own; I was a selfish creature and somehow he’d learned to cope with that fact.

The TallSun heat was something I’d missed, even though the mild weather of spring and fall were preferable. There was something promising in the way the sun always stood tall, casting shadows across the land and dispersing the darkness into realms only the North might recognize. It was true, the Aurora Basin still left a bitter taste in my mouth, but not for the reasons one might imagine these days… The land of the cold was now the least of my concern and more a necessary evil when it came to remembering. Instead the snow had been replaced with a burning warmth and a penetrating, bronze stare. How I hated that he’d stayed with me so long, even after I’d forbid myself from his memory. Funny, isn’t it, how such loathing and such passion can work simultaneously as one hostile emotion?

With my pale gaze narrowed against the darkening of the Threshold, I passed comfortably through the towering trees with all of their high branches. Was it pathetic that I’d found myself a nomad again, lost somehow, despite knowing these hills and plains like the back of my hand? What now awaited me beyond the claiming grounds and their frequented routes? Surely those who’d known me would have a hard time recognizing me now… My mane and tail had grown unruly, because I simply hadn’t cared, and my coat had lost some of its luster. However, my eyes had maintained their fiery beauty, even if everything else had been left in shambles. Perhaps that was how I’d always been… Who I was, was more important than what others saw. That was and is enough for me. For a moment I paused to deliberate what might happen when I was finally, inevitably, approached by those waiting to find me. It was not because of my name or my previous positions in Helovia, but only because I was essentially new again, that they’d come. But what would they see when they got here? Would I be faced with bright eyes and a smile that curled lips like fine wine or would I find myself again in the company of someone I loved? Somehow, every option frightened my fragile resolution and that’s what kept me from wandering any deeper into the land I’d revisited too many times. I guess everyone had to start somewhere, even if I’d essentially started right here time and time again.