For a moment, a quiet and blissfully ignorant moment, Alysanne didn’t realize she was no longer alone. She was being blinded by the pale sky and the snowflakes, lost in a world of white and grey as she tried to will the light to chase away the dark thoughts left behind by her nightmare, by the memories it dredged up. You might think that the memories of a demon attack, a vicious assault that had come out of nowhere, might make her a little more jumpy, a little more aware of her surroundings especially when someone approached, but that was not the case. She hadn’t learned her lesson yet and there was no telling when it would actually stick.

It was Hemlock who alerted her, a friendly reminder that she benefited from two sets of eyes instead of just one. While he hooted cautiously towards Irma as he swooped to land in the trees near where Mauja had paused. Although he had not yet experienced any sort of camaraderie or friendliness from his owls, he still felt incredibly curious about them.

Her small companion’s gentle hoot was Aly’s alert, dragging her from her thoughts and down towards the earth once again. She knew that sound so well, as familiar to her as the sound of the waves at the foot of the Edge’s cliffs and almost more familiar to her now than the sound of her children’s laughter.

Out of temporary self-preservation, her mind neatly glided over that observation and stored it to torture her later - likely the next time she was trying to sleep.

It took a moment for her eyes to refocus enough to realize who had arrived at the clearing - a silent moment for the shadows of the trees to stop being a single shade of deep blue and separating into greens, greys, and… ah, spots.

“Mauja.”

The word was coloured with warmth - no more, really, than she would give any who had wandered and been found again - and for a moment she let herself forget the awkwardness of their last meeting. She had been worried when days had stretched without a sight of him and more so when she had discovered that others had taken notice of his absence. Turned out, it took the disappearance of Mauja and others in the herd to get her and Tembovu to agree on something.

It was good to see him again, and her tone clearly suggested as much, but as her green eyes finally fully adjusted she picked out the signs that his time away from the Edge had not been peaceful. He seemed skinny - and she feared the full extent of how much weight he had lost was hidden beneath his winter coat. That open, friendly smile in her eyes faded, the joy at seeing him found temporarily dimmed by concern over his condition.

The snow did not stop falling around them - or, around her as she stood in the open and he was beneath the trees - but she forgot about it, taking a small step towards the spotted stallion before hesitating and instead letting her voice cross the distance between them. “How are you?” Were her next words, of course - she could be dead and buried and she would still find a way to speak those three words to someone she knew.  

If you could only understand—through my heart and through my veins

I gave it all,

I'll give again.