Even Avery had seemed so certain that the Demons had become a people of the past. It was difficult for Ruby to not consider the possibility that Avery had known otherwise, or had known a different truth, but what would she have gained from keeping that knowledge from Ruby? She considered her own mother, too. Yet, Siren...Siren had always been an unusual wolf. Even if Siren had told Ruby otherwise, she would not have known whether to believe it or not. Ruby’s love for her mother was true and deep, but she had seen enough of other wolves to know that her mother had a strangeness to her. This child, though. Stranger-children had no reason to lie or pretend, did they?

It was difficult to know which she had heard first – the child’s words or the woman’s growl. Nonetheless, Ruby startled back a step, her head twisting towards where the newcomer stood. She watched up at the woman, forcing her own instincts back down into the pits of her stomach, though her hackles still twitched and flared as if caught in a breeze. Ruby’s eyes were wide, at first, but they narrowed, her face moving through several expressions within that single moment – confusion, bewilderment, uncertainty, even a fleeting rush of happiness. If the child had been familiar, then the older woman was even more so. Despite Hepzibah watching her in such a way, Ruby could not help but feel her heart flutter – the woman’s eyes were almost like her own, like her mother’s and siblings’. Who were they?

Thankfully, the violence she had expected never came. Instead, the child spoke with words much more...unexpected, really. Ruby’s ears flickered at the sound, and she shook her head before she could truly register them. Hepzibah, Ishtar, the Bloodmouth. Sorath. She blinked, and slowly she rose. Her posture straightened, a cautious trust having been stirred up from within her at the names the child had spoken, for Ruby did know them, but few others seemed to recall them too often. Still, she bit down on her teeth and cursed the fact that she had learned so little of the Old Tongue despite both her parents having spoken it. She had always dismissed it...and now, she could understand little more than a taste of it.

"I am Ruby,” she said, able to at least offer the same as the girl had. "I am daughter of Siren, who was daughter to Lillith and Andras.” She twitched, having gone to speak of her father’s blood, but pulled the words back before they had a chance to leave her. Zerachiel was brother to Eden, but what else did she know of her father? His blood was a mystery, but his mother had been associated with the Angels, even if not by blood. Though she loved her father, she understood the concept of a ‘time and place.’

"I am a wolf of Iromar, homeland to my...our kin.” She bowed her head ever so slightly, and felt her tongue lash out in a moment of nervousness, running across her lips as if to taste the very word kin. She watched them closely, hunting across the plains of their features for something more. If they were her kin, had they come back to Moladion for some reason? Were there others? She flicked an ear, trying to hear beyond the grotto as if she might hear Demon blood itself moving among the others. And, above all else, what did she feel? What did they feel? Her heart was wild in her chest, but was it leaping for joy or to escape?