There were more eyes on her than usual. Some of those new eyes, however, were very much alive. Beltane had no doubt that the likes of Blackthorne would find her again, even if he had been caught in the web of a woman at the river. She could not say why Blackthorne had returned, or what it meant for Iromar, but she suspected they would know soon enough. He had an energy that did not handle being contained, after all. Even as she ventured through the crags, she could still hear him lingering in the background noise of the world. Even the dead, she seemed to think, were unsettled by his return.
She had been away from Iromar for some time, a fact she only seemed to realize when she noted the changing leaves on what few trees leaned and lingered over the streams that converged to meet Ruieze Lake. It had not been for any particular reason, only that she had felt her paws grow itchy and cold with a need to explore or roam. She had been born with vagrant's blood, and blood was difficult to forget.
The waterfall would have usually been rushing by, a flurry of white water crashing down the dark stones of the crags below. Yet, it only trickled now, a reminder of the sumemr that had been. Like a whisper, it crept down the rockface and pooled at the bottom in semi-stagnant water, dark with algae. It was there that she had found her place to rest, her toes teasing the water's edge as her head rested atop them. The clouds above cast delicate shadows on the water, playing alongside the afternoon sun and her eyes followed the dancing light across the water. One ear forward, her deadened ear back. Even in stillness, she seemed to shimmer, as if she was not entirely there, but part-mirage, part-ghost. Her skin prickled and twitched, and the rocks below her felt barely-there. Too peculiar, she felt, to return home.