Home? The ire of the golden beauty stumbles, and Sage holds back the barbed words on her tongue as she hear the lady she had missed utter a welcome to the snake who had stolen her away. Welcome home? You and I would laugh at the contorted expression of confusion on her beautiful face, were it not sent straight from the heart and rested uneasily upon her. Sage was a simple mare, one born of honor and trust. The mare she decided to stand behind was Mirage, and now the black tower of a lady had just spit the last words she had expected out of the snake-eyed fool. Glowering at the stallion from her vantage in the tree above, perched precariously on a branch, Sage considers this new fact in her mind before leaping down.

Her agile body falls nimbly between the trees' outreached limbs, a marvel we wonder at even as she lands easily as a cat, wings outstretched ever so slightly, between the pair upon the ground. Sage's breathing is steady, and she makes sure to turn her affectionate gaze to Mirage first, if such an expression we see could be called affectionate.

"Lady Mirage," she says, her voice elegant and curved like the gentle lady she appears to be, not the lionness lurking beneath her golden pelt. "I should have never doubted your abilities to see yourself free. I almost went to fetch you myself." The last sentence is rather condescending, as her face had turned to look toward Xanthos with a steely glint of mistrust. This snake in the grass, standing in her home, so near to her Queen. Sage did not like it, but she would dare not speak out against the leader of the Qian. Mirage knew better than she who to trust. We know that Sage is not apt to begin to trust him so quickly, though. The golden beauty snaps her teeth quietly while looking at the snake, a silent warning that he should keep his grubby little paws away from her Mirage.

The WeyrLeader need not be tainted by such a gruesome looking stallion. Xanthos, his voice steady, had been asking something during Sage's quick descent to the riverbank. The mare searches her memory swiftly, pulling up a little seedling we otherwise might have missed. "We could use a janitor, Xanthos," the mare says with a hint of sarcasm and a tiny laugh, before she begins to stalk closer, graceful movements drawing her body nearer. Her soft eyes are cutting and apt in the light as they look over his form. He was hardly suited to train underneath her as a Protector. "Perhaps a Wraith, seems you have a knack for plucking others from their homes."

Then, with a bit of an exaggerate sigh, Sage shakes her head. "Where are my manners?" Bowing her head toward Xanthos, the golden mare looks up with a determined look in her pastel eyes. "I am Sage."