The snows had driven the prey further south, and with Alice's stomach grumbling with the yearning for larger game, the Valkyrie and her hellbitch had wandered down into the southern wilds in pursuit of meat. The winter snow seemed to mute each sound down to the barest hush, and Hotaru was loathe to break it, sharing her thoughts with the hound's in utter silence. Allowing Alice - who wandered far ahead, nose to the skies and to the earth, eyes as sharp as an eagle's - to hunt at her leisure while she stretched her own legs. 

The Threshold was not unfamiliar to a woman like her - a leader, a thief, a secretive ghost in the shadows of the yawning trees. She had plucked many a soul from the tender bosom of the doorway without a single ounce of regret, adding them to her fold and flock with a tender smile that covered the wolf's teeth hidden beneath. With Alice off on her own she sidetracked, Arabic lineage meant for thick sand dunes just as adequate in the deep snow, and for once she did not suspect how her twins had ended up so deerlike in appearance and structure. It truly wasn't that abnormal considering their lineage. 

Even without Alice's ears to aid her own good hearing, she is not blind or deaf to the going-ons of the forest, the voice that calls out softly to another. With a gleam in her eye she shifted, the hush of snow the only heralding sound of her interest, and the Valkyrie went forth onto the field to pursue the warrior spirits calling to her. 

One is a stranger - a stallion, fair and handsome, and her eyes glaze over him appreciatively for a moment for she is a collector of all things beautiful and strong - but the other is far more interesting in counterpoint. In face a soft noise of surprise escapes her normally masked face, and she whickers low in greeting to the girl who has grown so much since Hotaru had saved her from the mountain lion that had sought her flesh. 

"Nymeria," she greets quietly with a reserved smile, one that is sincere, and because of that small. "You've grown up beautifully," she compliments, and her eyes gleam with the private knowledge and faltering familiarity between the pair of them. Wonders if the lass even recalls Hotaru at all, for how young she'd been when the traumatic incident had occurred. But then her head cocks and, quieter, asks a more important question: "Are you well?" 

It had been many years since Hotaru and Confutatis had last encountered one another - but Hotaru had never held that against Nymeria, and she would not now. But she privately wondered, almost sickly curious, if Nymeria took after the World Eater now that she had grown into her bones and beauty. 

At last she spares a glance to the stallion, polite and warm all at once. "Greetings, I am Hotaru, Lady of the Basin. May I ask your name?" She could not leave him feeling unwelcomed, after all.