Everyone leaves. It’s a fact she’s coming to understand, in the way you understand all bad things in life. You accept they will happen, but that never makes them any easier. She struggles daily with the losses her life has suffered, growing more and more each day. Her mother, father, and brother. Then her sister. Apollo. Glasgow, in a way, the mare at least still accessible but no longer around as she once was. Who was next? Yael, perhaps, who’s professed that she’s not sure where she wants to live forever. Lyanna doesn’t blame the little golden mare, or Glasgow. They needed to live their lives, and even Lyanna has wondered if the figurative grass would be greener elsewhere. But she’s always decided it wouldn’t be. Life is simply what she makes of it.

Which, if she’s being honest with herself, isn’t very much. It’s not a bad life either. She has friends and a job and a purpose and a safe place to live. It’s more than she had for those horrible months spent running, getting as far from Morham as she could. Stripped of her title, her family, and when she crossed into Helovia, her magic. The only thing she still has from that life is the one stupid little ear cuff on her ear. Some days she wants toss it off the cliff, but she can’t bring herself to give up that one small piece of her old life.

The familiar sound of Barty’s booming voice is welcome in a way that surprises her. She stops, looking over to see him trotting in her direction. “Bartholomeo,” she says warmly, face breaking into a grin, teal eyes twinkling. “I would love some company,” she adds as his smile suddenly fades as the flies find him.

“Here, I have plenty of tail for the both of us.” She swats her tail in the general direction of the flies trying to attack his flank, settling in neck to him at something of a close distance, so she can periodically fling her teal-tipped tail in his direction. Sometimes she does it with a bit of force, clearly being overzealous on purpose, but it is slightly amusing.

“I was going to look for a colored stone for our herd quest. I got this ruby from the Deep Forest,” she says, nodding toward her chest slightly, the ruby catching in the sun as she moves. “That would count as a colored stone, right?” She asks, glad to have someone else to talk to about it, because she’s not completely sure that’s what the Moon Goddess had in mind. But it’s colored, and technically a stone…if not, there must be other stones in a forest. “When I first came here, I met someone who showed me a whole pool of them in the forest. At least, it seemed like a good place to start.”