[ No worries! ]

Sunlight filtered down through the thick trees, broken into stark shadow and light. Autumn chill clung to the deepest, darkest corners of the world, hidden along the well-protected trunks and under heavy boughs, but along the shadow-patterned paths the air was mild at least. His glance over one shoulder showed Brisa hobbling along, not elegantly at first. Clearly her dunk in the water had chilled her, and beneath all that mud her fetlock was probably sore. He watched, cautiously, a moment longer. At least it took her weight. Good. It'd probably heal well, then—maybe it was just tender, with nothing really wrong with it. He hoped so, for her sake, but didn't ask about it. She didn't seem high-strung exactly, but had been a bit displeased to have him come over and simply ask "what's up", as if he was some moron who couldn't see that she was stuck. Which, he sort of was, but all the same, he thought that maybe asking about her foot would make her embarrassed.

In fact, Mauja was content to amble along in silence. Once he'd been able to discern the way the wind blew and where the sun stood, he took them on a westward path at a sedate pace, knowing it to be the best way to come under clear skies. North and east led towards the thick forests of the Edge, south into a sparser forest before you came onto the Meadow, but in the west it thinned fairly quick, bleeding out into the rolling grassy sand-dunes. They stretched for miles on end until you caught the glimmer of the sea by the horizon, and at last, the pale beach spreading out underneath the sky. His mind traveled there with ease; he had been in every corner of Helovia, and had seen it all. While he thought that maybe she'd appreciate the beauty of the sapphire ocean he didn't intend to take her all the way there—just a little further west of this thick willow forest, so she would dry faster.

They hadn't gone far at all when Brisa broke the companionable silence, and one of Mauja's black-rimmed ears angled backwards to listen. No life-altering statement, no profound question of the state of his soul; just a companionable, curious question, one he was inclined to ask of strangers himself. Did she genuinely want to know, or did she simply dislike the relative silence of the midday forest? "Hm," he hummed, indicating he'd heard, but paused a moment longer to ponder. The earth was solid and stable underneath his moving feet. What brought him here, indeed? Straight from the wondrous caves Circuta had shown him.. he'd simply wandered. "I was looking for peace, actually. Some quiet place where I could rest both mind and body." He gave a slight shrug, passed through a patch of sunlight, and back into shadow. "I wander a lot." A heartbeat's silence, then he flung his large head to the side mid-stride, to fix her with one blue eye as his body rocked along to the steadfast rhythm of his pace. "And you?"