Living in Iromar was taking some…adjusting to. The air had felt thick in my lungs for the first few days, though I had grown accustomed to it. While I had stuck close to Tesseract and Praetor in the beginning, I slowly began to wander through the swampy lands. I’d had my first taste of a muskrat, and I knew the taste of the animals of the swamp would take some adjusting to as well. Overall, it was just a lot of change, a major shift in my life that I was learning to cope with in my own ways. All my life I had taken every situation as a chance to learn, and this would be no different. Tesseract's recent absence had not gone unnoticed, and some part of me knew it would be a long time before I saw him again. I missed him, but the events that had landed us in Iromar effected him the most of all, and I could not blame him for finding his own way of coping.

It was strange to find myself moving back within the tunneling caverns of the grotto, where I had first met Aithne. The time between then and now had seen so many changes in my life. But one thing that had not changed about me was how much I loved to swim, to feel the caress of water against my sides and the ablution it brought to me. The murky waters of Iromar were not safe for such ventures, and the open seas off of western coast of the pack lands were far too treacherous to submerge within. Maybe it would have been simpler to travel just north of the pack lands to the Aplos river's source, before the silted soil of Iromar muddied it, but I held a certain preference for the waters found below ground in the grotto. The touch of cold stone against my paws reminded me of the rocky southern shores of Glorall. I hadn't traveled deep enough within the grotto to reach the same pool where I had once swam and first encountered my now alpha. Instead I had found a runoff pool only a short way within the caverns and enjoyed swimming there for a short while, cleansing my pelt before I decided it was time to make my way home - to Iromar - once more.

Shaking out my pelt, I began to move up the path towards the surface once more, the light at the end of the tunnel guiding me forward. When the light became blotted out by a shadow I paused for but a moment before continuing forward. The form of a grey streaked male came into view, silhouetted by the sunlight at his back. From what I could read of his body language he seemed almost tentative in his entrance to these catacombs. It could be a rather daunting place if you did not know your way around. But any wolf's demeanor change in the flash of an instant, and so I stopped just down the cavernous tunnel, leaving a bit of space between us so that I could easily turn and escape back down in the labyrinth of the caves if he became rather unpleasant to be around “Hello,” I said, my tones gentle and friendly. My nostrils flared, trying to figure out if he lived down here, in a pack, or somewhere else. He did not seem to carry any particular scent, and so I assumed he was a loner. The life of a loner was one I did not understand quite so well, for the benefits of living in a pack were far more abundant. In the silence between us, water softly dripped from my fur and echoed against the stone surface below my paws. "I'm Vesper." The tunnel was not wide enough for him to simply carry on his way and ignore me entirely; I could turn around if I wanted to but I would wait and see what his reaction was first before leading him further in. Perhaps this would be an ice breaker enough to open a conversation between us.