Warm, maybe, but never warm enough. Nothing compared to the warm she had felt...what was it now? Years? Lifetimes? Her father's face was but a ghost that lingered in the corners of her own and her mother's voice nothing but a dream that lulled her to sleep. She saw her brother's in the reflections of the water, lost to time and myth. Yes, the sun might have risen from its winter slumber but nothing inside her awoke. She remained a vagrant, a leaf in the wind, unsettled and unresting. What had changed? Though she grew taller and stronger each day, more adept and more focused, she still flutterd from one world to the other, from one life to next. Some days, she hunted and revelled in the sound of a fawn crying for its mother like she had and other days, she giggled and dashed about the fields of flowers, kind as she allowed the butterflies to land atop her nose and lashes. Who was she? Nobody had ever asked. Her name was but the sound of an unanswered question, an unfulfilled desire.

And so, she roamed and tested the waters of the world around her. From Taviora, she had travelled southward, following along the river as it curved towards the packs of the east. She revelled in the new scents and sights, watched as new families begun to find pleasure in one another and, quietly, she seethed. She grinned and yet her eyes stared out, wide and vicious in their envy. Nobody else deserved it. Nobody else had spent so much time alone. Why them? When would her own debt be paid? Those feelings had been like teeth in her gut, all consuming and scathing and so, she had forced herself away. Perhaps it is why she had become drawn to the solitary figure of another child, a predatory thing that lingered by the water. Whoever it was, their aura called to Eto.

She moved along the banks, her head low and eyes owl-like in their intensity as she stared towards the stranger. Slowly, she paced the wet stone and mud, her paws dirtied and ears erect as she came within several yards of the other; she did not speak at first but merely, she watched. Her head tilted, a jerking and erratic movement, before she issued a low grumble of a greeting, a sound she had faint memories of from her own father - come out, come out, it said. Nobody else was alone. So why was this girl also alone? Was she like Eto? Did she feel a winter within her despite the sun?