aurelia was, in a word, wandering.

after daenerys had been displaced from the throne, her family had been one of the many to leave spirane’s borders rather than remain under the new alpha. she couldn’t tell you why her siblings had left the mountains, nor why her mother had, but aurelia couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else ruling the mountainside. she had departed with her family members, casting one long mournful look at the paths she had grown up on before continuing onwards, flanked on each side by her brothers. she had appreciated the support of her siblings in the beginning, either caderyn or berwyn there whenever she needed them, but it had quickly become suffocating. aurelia loved the mountains - the open views and the freedom that came with scaling the paths, but even before they had left, aurelia had determined that spirane, and it’s mountains, were just a place she lived, not her home. as far as she knew, home was a feeling, not a place. home was a warm glow of contentment and the feeling of safety.

the girl had been leaving the den they had were sharing more and more, spending more time away from her family than with them. she had dared to explore the cool darkness of the grotto and the dim encora woodlands, had been in the bottom of mecor valley, and still, she was not happy. aurelia had enjoyed the experience of being a loner in the beginning, had enjoyed the mixture of scents and sights that were new and different, but she didn’t want it anymore. she wanted the stability a pack offered again, the knowledge that there were others keeping an eye out for you, even if you didn’t know them personally. being without that made her feel incredibly alone. she was in a peculiar place in her life - not quite an adult but not a adolescent either. she had known who she wanted to be in spirane but without a pack, without a purpose, she felt like she was drifting in a gray area, a space where she only had a fuzzy outline of who she wanted to be that felt like a stranger.

she had set out early that morning with only her usual goodbyes to her siblings and mother, leaving none the wiser that it was unlikely she would return to them. she loathed to do them in such a way, but she needed time and space to figure herself out before she could be with them or let them know where she was. the aurelia they remembered from the past was not the aurelia who was living in the present. she had grown apart from the entire group of them, even if her brothers had remained as overprotective of her as they had been as children.

aurelia could remember days of her childhood when being alone had been a chore, a punishment. now she longed for those moments of solus, and that change could have made her laugh. was it not her fear of lonesomeness that had guided her to the decision she had made? had she not left spirane to find others, to stop being alone, she would not have met despoina or received the invitation to iromar. she had almost made it to the marshes with despoina, if she recalled correctly, when her mother’s howl had called her back to the mountainside. it had been quite some time since then, and perhaps the other woman would not remember her, but what other options did she have? she could follow her old packmates and alpha to diveen, where they would be visitors and not residents, or she could find her way to one of the other packs, but what was the point of that? she would at least know someone in iromar, and that was - in truth - the deciding factor.

the pale morning light began to brighten as she made her way towards the marshes, the brunette and cream woman coming to stop a few feet away from the border. navy and gold eyes stared into the sun dappled shadows for a long moment, as she both assured herself of her decision and steeled her nerves for the future. tipping back her slender muzzle, she released a short howl and then fell silent.