Çiçek knows a mask when she sees one.

Siobhan is nice enough, reserved like Faolain, but something lurks beneath the surface. She can see how the red mare’s smiles don’t quite reach her eyes, how she glances over her history and turns the attention away from herself. Something about her reminds Çiçek of Briar, her granddam; Azaleya had spoken often of the whitesplashed Inlet mare, pure of heart and deeply despondent. Briar’s life had been full of nothing but pain and suffering, euphoria and devastation. Had something, too, caused Siobhan pain?

Çiçek doesn’t pry. Just as with flower-laced Faolain on the beach, nearly half a year ago, she twists along with her companion, following in lockstep to the next subject without missing a beat. Her head raises a bit at the mention of rainbows, her eyes wide. “I do love a good rainbow,” she laughs. “You simply must show me sometime soon.” She’s happy, here, to just enjoy this moment, and all of the precious moments she has left before winter turns to spring, no matter how the thought of having to tell her dear friends looms, haunting, in the back of her mind. Conflictingly, a not-insignificant part of her wonders where, exactly, she might find rainbows in the Cove, and what it would take to seek them out in a place that didn’t show them off in spades.

Siobhan’s mention of her daughters pulls her back to the present, sewing her together from feeling so ripped in opposite directions. So some of those little birds she’d been hearing in the undergrowth were hers. The chestnut continues, and still the smile doesn’t reach any other parts of her delicate face. Her creamy ears perk forward at her question. “Oh, not to worry, I’ve been here no more than…” Çiçek shifts her weight to her other hip, glancing briefly skyward and back down to present company. “Half a year, perhaps? I came to the Islands in late spring of this year, and we met just before she brought me here.” So much has happened since the day she stood upon the shores of the mainland and decided to make the journey to the land of her ancestors. It feels like years have passed, not months. “She is… quiet.” Çiçek smiles. “More reserved than me, I think. But I’ve enjoyed teaming up with Rivaini to get her out of her shell.” She blushes to remember the boldness with which Faolain had caressed her just weeks prior. She hadn’t expected it from the ‘Teke, given the chasteness of their previous interactions, but she had reveled in it while it lasted.

Her new friend has said another name, however, one both foreign and oddly familiar all at once, and her head tilts, eyes bright with curiosity. “Ailill?” she repeats, testing it on her tongue. “My mother told me of an Ailill… I think they met when she was just a girl.” She smiles at the memory, her voice warm and bubbly with mirth. “She said he taught her how to dance.” Could it be the selfsame Ailill, still here after all these years? Would he remember Azaleya - or Briar, if she was lucky? Çiçek marvels at her luck, at the way fate seems to pull her like a planet in orbit around the paths of her ancestors, and makes a note to ask Siobhan to introduce them later on.