Suddenly everyone is there. First it was the brown boy, with curious but pleasant blue eyes and yellow around his wings; simple questions that didn’t overwhelm the calm happiness that filled the strange filly at bonding with Sachi.

But, then, there were two more fillies; both equally exuberant but with different ways of expressing themselves. Esi’s pale, white eyes began to widen; her smile faded from her small muzzle, leaving lines of worry and creases of fear. Her gaze flicked from the looming golem to Clem’s uneven stripes to Iskra’s yellow ones—suddenly seeing the dizzying and perturbingly uneven lines instead of the happy youth that had once stood in his place. (His whispered ‘sorry’ lost amid the chaos.)

“What a fine companion you have there, little Oxpecker!”

Her bull-horned head jerked towards Zero as he arrived—and not even the warm rush of recognition towards her brother (half-brother? cousin? the filly didn’t know in her rising panic) could calm any of the chaos that began to tear through her head.

Small, dark grey hooves took a stutter-step backwards, away from the rush of words and patterns—though suddenly two warm, small, still slightly damp hands grasped onto her front pastern. Sachi’s loud noises had, at some point, ceased; the infant lemur’s attention leaving Melita’s incoming nose (for which she did reach for in curiosity, before her attention was taken to Esi) the moment fear coursed from her bonded.

Awkward, clumsy movements slowly took the the young lemur up Esi’s leg—simultaneously anchoring the filly in place, among the friends and family that had pulled Arakh (and thus her) to the Throat.

White-rimmed eyes look down at Sachi’s doggedly climbing, before slowly looking up at all those gathered—eyes instinctively landing on Arakh’s (displeased) blue eyes. When had he arrived? Dark and white rimmed ears swirl about in confusion, catching Arakh’s growl, which she instinctively flinches away from. Pale eyes blink towards her twin, vaguely hearing his forced ’Congratulations’—but it was his clouded face and distance body that spoke volumes more to the sensitive, strange filly.

A quiet, soft mewl left her throat, the strangling visibly shrinking inside of her grey, striped skin. Even her wings pinned tightly to her sides—but nestled among them now was Sachi, her determined climb up her Esi’s leg being successful.

In response to the mounting alarm, a loud CRACK came from Sachi, and the infant rougarou snapped back into her initial form—a newborn harpy. Grey-white fuzz covered her mottled grey, bumpy skin and a starkly black beak protruded from her angular face. Unsteadily, baby-fuzz wings were held out to her sides as she swayed on chicklet, dark scaled limbs. But her white-hot eyes glared around. Despite no words and her infancy, her possessiveness was clear: she wanted everyone to look at Esi and recognize the panic that was overwhelming both of them.

Then, quietly, the strangling spoke, “I Esi,” to the buoyant fillies—not yet able to answer Melita’s question about what Sachi did, and “No, not know how companions ‘work,’” to Zero.

Carefully, worriedly, her eyes settled on Arakh as she hesitantly answered Iskra, “Yes, Rak my brother,” she looked to the many, bright stripes on Iskra’s skin in uncertainty, then, “Come here to be with family. You family?”

Dizzingly, the filly wondered if all their family was this loud… and this energetic.