It had been a long time since she had been approached in such a matter; it made her cautious initially, a little taken aback by his guarded nature and yet, she had not seen an innate threat within him. Hell, he even carried a bone with him like a tiny pup - she had dealt with those, at least. When her children had been younger, they had done much the same, after all. But there was no mother inside her and his appearance pulled at no strings. She had brought him here for a reason, a warning if you would, and she'd deliver it regardless. Innocence was a trait that fast got you killed. It had been Valkyrie's downfall all those years ago. He'd been kind, too. He'd been a child oblivious to the world and so, he had ended up a tattered scrap of skin on the blackened plains that now rested beneath the valley.

She met his step forward with her own, bridging the space ever so slightly as her eyes rested on the grey of his own. There was something in them. Something a little familiar, perhaps but everything seemed familiar to her now. Since Heyel's departure, things had blurred together little by little - past and present seemed more alike than ever. It didn't seem fair that some of the past got to survive while other parts vanished. Just like it didn't seem fair to look into eyes that seemed so alive when hers reflected back something hard and cold.

"I'm Malina," her introduction was short and curt, without the pleasantries many others might have offered. To her, of course, it seemed pleasant enough. Many other times, she might have neglected it altogether. But this male, whoever he was, had the faintest something about him - Sleekwing? Malina could feel her imprint on him. Perhaps that is why she had felt some kind of pity when she had found this stranger's scent intermingled with Tobias' own.

"You were in the valley with a certain wolf," she then begun, glancing behind him as a precaution. After all, you could never be sure who might follow or who might be too curious for their own good. It was not as if Tobias didn't have a habit of lingering like a foul stench. "What do you know about him?"

Perhaps she ought to have gone about it another way - a kinder, more gentle way - and yet, she didn't have it in her. There was a loss in the corner of her lips, a certain tension in the muscles of her shoulder. The body and face of somebody who had lost something and only hoped to gain something back in return. If that meant simply saving somebody else from the pain of Tobias and his ilk, then so be it. It's what Heyel would have wanted.