She knows ghosts all too well. They don’t appear to her, except that once in the strange shadow that must have been magic. It’d been a memory, not a ghost. No, she hears her ghosts. They rattle in her head, answering her questions as they would have in life, berating her for her failing. She cannot escape them, not even here. Though on some level she doesn’t want to forget them. She wants to remember. Wants to preserve the memory of their voices and the details of their faces. Just not inside her head, talking to her like they are still here.

They rush away though at Ru’s smile. She has some friends here, yes, but not that many. Ru is one of them, or so she’d like to think. Perhaps the other mare doesn’t feel the same, but her greetings are friendly and though not enough, they are somewhat frequent. This time though, Ru opens her mouth to speak, and Lyanna smiles just a little brighter. “You do speak,” she says, and there’s no trace of unkindness in her voice as she says this. No teasing, no hidden meaning. As Ru’s expression turns bashful, Lyanna adds, “It’s just a different language. I’ve met quite a few diplomats in my life that spoke in what sounded like tongues to me.”

Ru’s language, of course, is unique. She doesn’t know the details of why her words come out as they do, but the details don’t really matter. They only matter insomuch as perhaps one day she can use them to help Ru, or to simply learn to understand her. She could read gestures pretty well – many years of training in that. It would be possible to learn to put Ru’s gestures together with the words she spoke. Should the girl ever want.

Her brown wings raise in the shrug, a somewhat apathetic answer to “how are you”, which creases Lyanna’s brow slightly. But how does she ask “what’s wrong?” in a yes or no question? It’s not a question that can be answered so simply. So instead, she speaks the truth. “Yea. I find I feel that way as well sometimes. The Edge is lovely, and I love it, but it’s big. It is easy to get lost.” It is easy to feel overlooked, forgotten, as she feels so often here.

Together, they clear the snow away, preparing for spring and planting. As they finish, Ru shivers and trills. A laugh escapes from Lyanna, that gentle, good-natured laugh and it feels good. It feels like herself, and she’s been finding that such a hard thing to be lately. “I did say a little warmer. Not warm. We’d probably have to visit the Throat to find even a bit of real warmth.” The other home she’d been offered here, the one that always lingers in the back of her mind. Like maybe it would have felt more like home. But in the end, she doubts it.

The topic shifts to her though, and Lyanna is grateful just to have someone to talk to. And not because Ru can’t tell anyone else, but because she trusts the girl. “You saw the challenge, right?” she asks, waiting for a yes or no confirmation. But she’s pretty sure she saw Ru there, though she’d been too wrapped up in her own head to really pay attention to the things going on around her.