A smell permeates from within a borders, familiar but different, distinct from the others for it is marked by the myriad stench of the wilderness and not the crisp, cold pines of her mountain. She turns her face towards the entrance, the silhouette of the sentinel a marker easily denoting the slight clearing even though she does not need it; this place is the top of her knee, known and familiar.

It’s why the smell is so intriguing, sending the slightly chubby Lady (who had yet to burn off her baby baring fat) and child out towards the gate. For once, she didn’t have to beckon for him to follow, the boy growing accustomed to being toted about by his mother like some glorified living handbag flaunted to all kinds of people he didn’t know and wasn’t sure he cared to yet.

None of these decisions were his own. And so when they cleared the top of the hill and his golden eyes fell upon a young lady who was dark like he was with two horns rising from her brow, he’s quite pleased with today’s meet and greet. He hasn’t met the other foals in the herd yet, and this one, aside from moon-eyes and his Thistle Sister, was the youngest they had met. Quite excited, an added bounce makes its way into his step as they close the last bit of distance between them, young eyes peering up at his mother to see her reaction to the girl at their door.

His mother is looking at the sentinel, who has done nothing to the girl, and then, finally, to the damsel herself, and Rikyn finds a faint sense of recognition cross his dam’s tricky mask before she is all smiles and regal moonlight halting just before the returning daughter.

They’d caught her words as they approached, the boy wondering who she belonged to if she was all alone and they were not here to bring her in instead of mother.

"Rhiannon?" she guesses, sweetly framed in her white smile and tilting crown as she seems to search the horizon behind the young mare, "You’re alone." The Lady sounds sad, wondering where the former Weaver could be if he is not with his beloved daughter, while Rikyn only wonders who mother alludes to and if they’re important. It seems she knows everyone with a horn in this damn kingdom and so it’s no surprise to him that she is aware of this Rhiannon’s family, but its also not clear that her parents or siblings are of any mention such as his father or mother were.

"But you have grown!" cheer returns to the golden wench’s features as she sweeps her eyes across the height of the girl, last remembering her standing just below her father’s shoulder and impressed with the muscle and height she as acquired since then, "It is good to know you are well. Where did life sweep you away to, if I might ask?"

[ OOC: Ahaha I have a table with these lyricsssss ~ irony. We has it. ]

Greetings among kin are always sweet, she muses as the welcoming phrases slide between the two women, one dark and the other chocolate; her son has grown bored with the women as soon as it seems it just going to be another one of these conversations revolving around the darkness he had disastrously missed out on being a part of (for it seemed to be a highly common topic and one of great adventure and mystique) and looks around them with an ear angled to the talk slipping between the pretty one called Rhiannon and his flashy ignoramus of a mother.

"Your mother is here," she says after a pause, having to search her memory considerably harder for times she had seen the now grown filly alongside her dam; so similar in appearance was the babe to her father that Illynx found it without much surprise that she had clung to the one who so obviously had won out in the genetic structuring of the child, "she remained with us through the darkness and is recovering from a recent assault, but she is well." Illynx does not know that Rhiannon is not truly of Arah’s body – she does not care.

Such things are beyond her concern.

"You have sisters, now," she adds offhandedly, wondering if those she speaks of are near and might venture into their gathering, but the conversation at hoof keeps her eyes poised on the newfound curvature of little Nonnie, wondering at the marvels of time and how it molded even the sweetest of children into weapons that flashed in the mountain vale. It fills her with deep hope for her son, who has withdrawn from the conversation to such a point that he no longer listens with a single ounce of his observatory power.

She smiles as the mention of the child draws his golden eyes back towards them with an eager glisten, wonder at why it is he has been drawn to the lips of this pretty and much older girl and finding the answer to be quite simple and droll as most other times he becomes a part of the verbal commentary. "He is called Rikyn," she chimes, and the boy smiles as if to say ”Right here!” before returning to his daydreams.

Her brows rise and ears tilt heavily towards the daughter of the former Weaver as she delves into her explanations for her absences, words that she’s heard several times already as her kin trickles back in through the front gate that differ only slightly. They tell of fear, of not knowing; but most stinging of all these weaknesses were what they reflected onto herself and the dark stallion who ruled this place alongside her, that they had failed to provide a pillar for them to cling to when the winds peaked and the snow blew in swift and deep on the mountainous gusts.

It does not read on her face, but for a brief flickering in her eyes that could mean a million things cross her thoughts.

She cut short as her son nickers into the balmy air, a sound of friendly greeting that is alight with his enthusiasm upon discovering that it is another child.

He, at first, believes it to be Aithniel, until he spies that the shoulders are bare upon the girl and that his mother is looking at her with some degree of warmth rather than disgust as she does his sister. "Speak of the devil," his mother says with a smirk as she glances back to Rhiannon. Rikyn’s smile is broad and hopeful as he withdraws from his youthful games and trots back towards the women he’d wandered away from, his grin growing all the brighter as the other girl greets him – but then she coughs, a terrible sound, and his features fall.

Is she sick? Why hasn’t her mother taken her to see Lena, that nice lady his mom talks about all the time? What was her job again? The Line Mender?

"Concageious?" he asks, drawing a tinkling laugh from his dam at his attempt to utilize the word he’d learned during her tales of the wraiths and gently correcting him. "Contagious, darling, and no, I don’t think so."

At that, his smile is back and he sidles up towards the filly’s side, happy as a cat in a fish tree to have someone he might lure away to play with him rather than droll, confusing adult talk that seemed to devour all of his time.

What the girl says next is indeed interesting, a concept he would have never arrived to on his own had she not made it known to him that this woman looked a lot like another person who had once been here and helped make the golden girl as his father had helped make him. He looks to the black and white mare with horror on his face, glancing to his mother with auspicious hope that the filly is wrong and the mare is not a cannibalistic man eater.

"She’s your sister, Arwen," answers his mother sweetly with her same chiming laughter, and Rikyn breathes a sigh of relief and settles back into the conversation comfortably.

"As to coming home," she says, looking to Rhiannon with her smile still floating on her delicate and graceful face, "our family is always welcome. The rules are the same as they have always been, though the faces that uphold them have changed. Your sire is not the only one lost; Faelene, Zuriel, Belial… these are siblings I have not seen in too long." She sighs, her smile twitching in the corners as if it will fall before she is back in her full regale. "I am glad to have you here, safe. May the Lord of Storms guide your father and the others home as well."