Physically, the trek back to Moladion hadn't been anything different than what the Gypsies were used to. They were of the few who hadn't had their homes snatched from them, because they never claimed to belong to a home. They had been Gypsies in Moladion, and they remained Gypsies as they skirted the carnage and regrowth for two years. Emotionally, there had been a few differences, because they had each been affected in one way or another by the destruction and mass deaths of many good wolves.

Returning to Moladion was a bittersweet welcome that was similiar to returning to the dusty old house you grew up in after the passing of your parents, only to find someone had knocked it down and built an entirely new house that you no longer recognized. When wandering the massive new crater, Hawthorn had to constantly remind himself to not think about the fact that he was in the crater - the scar left from the meteor that had taken so many lives through murder and through the tearing apart of the things everyone held dear.

He also had to constantly remind himself to be grateful for his Gypsies, his small family that had never abandoned him through their Exodus, and for the fact that he had at least one endearing niece alive and the two sons of Makism and Tarquin (who might as well have been his nephews). He still had his Pompeii, his dearest baby sister. And if anything ever got to the point that he felt he could no longer handle it on his own, he felt absolutely no shame in the idea of returning to his mother and her band. Family was family forever, and all Gypsies were family.

The Medicine Man had been scouting out appropriate places throughout New Moladion for his band to rest and hunt when he noticed Alice through the thicket a ways off, wandering down the slope towards the murky swamps. She was an independent and curious creature, the very sort that Hawthorn would usually expect to leave the band and go their own way sooner than later, but he had been very grateful for her consistantly logical and practical mind through the last two years. Only, he regretted not having been able to speak with her as often as he perhaps should have, as absorbed as he was in his family's wellfare, trying to sort through the tragedy they had fled, and keeping contact with the other bands of families that had formed so that when Yojimbo and Dude deemed the time appropriate he could lead them back home.

He woofed softly as he trotted a little faster down the slope to catch up with her, just loud enough to alert her to his presence, as surprising others usually made him feel rather guilty. He wasn't exactly silent in his movement, either, as he felt no need to be and his rather large frame easily bent and broke branches and brush along the way.

"I, ah... wonder if any alligators have somehow... made their way back into these waters," he wondered in his deep, but even and warm, tone out loud to her as he reached her side and looked into the murky grime of the water. The thought hadn't been expressed with the intention to frighten her from the waters, but simply to make conversation. Unfortunately, Hawthorn wasn't always a keen conversationalist. "There seems to be plenty of other game... Err... How are you, Miss Alice?"

Smooth as butter.