Where was she? Surely she had to be nearby, my nose was pretty good at this kind of stuff, after all. I pivoted, turning in the clearing but not able to pick her dark coat out. Then her voice trilled out across the short distance to a nearby boulder, and I spun to face it as my sister came jogging out from behind it. My maw parted in a broad grin, glad to see her after her most recent absence. Visenya had a tendency to wander, to explore further afield than most, but she always came home again. I chuffed a laugh at her words, trotting to meet her halfway and allowing her to place her muzzle on top of my own. There was a slight itch of disapproval at the back of my mind for her to do such a thing - I was truly beginning to come into my own and the cold temperatures of winter brought sensations of dominance to the surface alongside those I'd been feeling in regards to Vortigern. Yet she was my sister, and I knew her well enough to know it was simply her way of expressing her happiness to see me.

Still, I nudged my nose upwards to displace her with a laugh, before stepping forward alongside her and resting my chin across her shoulders. "Yeah, yeah,"" I responded casually. Nostrils flared, taking in the foreign scents that mingled in her pelt as my head sat across her withers for a moment. "So, where did you get off to this time?" I asked jovially as I stepped back from her and looked her in the face once more. It was not unheard of, for wolves of our family to seek to explore the world beyond the peaks. Our aunts, Orca and Idunn, were perfect examples of such. There was a clawing feeling in my abdomen at the thought, hoping that Visenya would stay closer to home than them, for it was often many years between their visits to Spirane.

With tail waving back and forth, I listened to whatever tale Visenya might have to tell, eagerly eating up each morsel of detail she offered. Shifting from paw to paw, I waited for my chance to bring up what had been nagging at the back of my mind. And yet, when the opportunity presented itself, I wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject. "Hey, have you ever...I dunno, wanted to spend all of your time with one wolf? And when you're not together, you just think about when you will be again?" Once the words started, they seemed to tumble out of me in a rush, and in an unusual display I became a little bashful, averting my gaze for a moment before looking back at Visenya, hoping my sister wouldn't laugh at me and my ridiculous question. We weren't pups anymore - the reality of the world around us wasn't something foreign as it was in youth, and yet I still felt somehow perplexed by the way I felt about Vortigern.