The struggle of motherhood was being able to bear my own insecurities without the children to see. I had been hesitant about children. It was natural and thus, my instincts had become apparent when I was pregnant that mothering was not something special, merely an inclination, but the moment that I spied my four children I had felt a sort of internal snap. The desire to protect had been stronger than I had ever felt. The need to nourish, to cherish, to cuddle with them. Part of it was instinct, part motherhood, and part was that I did not wish to be as Aithne was to me. I loved my mother fiercely and yet, we were polar opposites in many things. Even this as I look back at my daughter who runs right into my legs before wagging her tail.

My silent ember. Sometimes I think her flame burns all the brighter for it. She is intelligent beneath her innocence, even if she has had such a rough start at life. Trying to work with her, teach her, was difficult work and she did not understand. There was something I was missing in teaching, I knew, that made it so my training did not click. Once it did, though, I had little doubt my Archana would become a raging inferno of words.

With her nudge my ears prick forward, sapphire and emerald eyes flaring as she pounces in the direction we had originally come from. I knew that gesture - her heart was calling her north while mine was here, in this snow encrusted land of shadows and disaster. "No," I mouth the words loudly, wondering if she perhaps felt the import of them even if she couldn't hear it. I am firm - they must realize that we would not be returning to the plains.

With a sigh, I try to think of a way to soften my word, but Archana is already distracted, and her play makes my tail twitch across the snow. Slowly a smile begins to creep across my maw. This is a beautiful moment, I think, watching as my daughter leaps to catch the snow and as she falls back to the ground I open my jaw and snap it shut, up and around a fat snowflake before grinning down at her. We could communicate without words, I think, but I had to learn how and the patience to do so. Maybe then, the words would come.

I tilt my head, studying her, before leaning down and nudging her small head and gesturing forward before taking a few steps and glancing down to make sure that she understands to follow. With her at my heels, I would need to be swift, but her company is not unwelcome. If she became cold I would carry her to faster return us to the den and if I managed to find something, well, maybe the language my daughter heard was the one of a huntress. At least with the half-blizzard, her loud steps would go unheard.

It is then one ear twists back and my head swivels with it, eyes widening and nostrils flaring as I hear a low chitter. I stay frozen for the moment, searching, searching, until I spy a red figure. A fox plows through the snow with great difficulty, ears alternating between being pinned back and rising, it's visibility limited much as mine and shorter legs having a hard time through the soft snow. Immediately I sink down, on alert, and begin to prowl forward with slow, measured steps, casting a slow and poignant look at Archana before moving my eyes in an arc towards the fox so that she might see. That she might learn.