She hadn’t anticipated the heavy air of silence. They’d been addressed and received quickly elsewhere, but those moments had been within kingdoms and empires, with beasts and soldiers used to patrolling their borders. The Thistle Meadow was wild, open, and free, obtained for anyone and everything, owned by no one and nothing at all, and didn’t adhere to the structure of herds. Perhaps some loitering within weren’t curious about the two femmes notched along the knoll; maybe they had other things to do, heralding names and phrases from another time, another place, or another inhabitant. So she waited, diligent and patient, for something, someone, to join them, to listen to their call, to be encouraged by the ways in which their earth had changed; but naught seemed to settle over the depths. Her eyes would scan the horizon, and Imogen would raise her head, try to find distinct, unfamiliar scents sprinkled throughout the void, and then Lena would merely glance at Rexanna and shrug, uncertain, unsure, if interest could be gained here.
 
A gentle bleating caught her attention, a swiveling of her ears, a casting of her refined head swinging towards the sound; some seconds later, a mare emerged, cast in red and adorned in shells. Her smile immediately drifted back to her features, an amiable, beneficent grin sculpted for deliverance, acceptance, and benedictions, as the stranger roamed closer. Before Lena had a chance to drop her head in greeting, a soft inquiry billowed along their depths, and she gave a merry little laugh. “Perhaps for you!” Then she winked, gentle and forthcoming, a merry wind emblazoned with bird song and aria wiles, delving further into their reasoning with a little less fairy essence (as if she could flutter back into the midnight oils, amused and diverted for a time, for a snippet, before she was whisked back to her garden kingdom) and more of a Mender stature. “We’re from the Aurora Basin,” and here she nodded towards the mountains in the far-off distance, where they’d undoubtedly be laden with snow and ice soon. “I’m Lena.” Then she looked to Rexanna, the smile still arched and pleasant, before glimmering back to the ruby-laden fay. “We’ve come to invite everyone to our upcoming festival.”