The savanna had not lasted long. While the grey had presented himself as a stubborn sort of fool, one that would not relent in his desperate attempts to bring the perlino back to the masses of his herd, he had disappeared. Gone. Not unlike the roan that had placed the baby in her belly, he had vanished without a trace, leaving Volpe with a couple days to herself before she resolved to do something she was not entirely comfortable doing.
She returned to the inlet.
The last time she had been on tinuvel has been a trial on her person, leaving her mentally tired and emotionally scarred. She had been terrified for the safety of her own beloved daughter, that she had relented and let the glorious bastard take her innocence. This new child was unwanted and, as far as she knew, not really hers. It would always be Governor's, and that fact she could not ignore. Washing up on the shore of the inlet, she shivered against the cold breeze that greeted her where she stood. The chill was familiar and haunting, digging frigid fingers into her skin and reminding her of the cove. She was not happy, and a perpetual frown had become fastened to her pale lips. Standing there with her legs still hanging back in the waves, she stared across the coast of the inlet, waiting for the roaned beast to emerge from the trees and find her.
While Volpe had stood at the edges of the water, Liat had been going about her daily routine of checking the coast for her mother, still vainly hoping that her mother would return to her, that she had not been entirely forgotten by the perlino. Weaving through the trees, she spotted the coast first, eyeing the waves that rolled in repeatedly, and looking as though they should try and swallow the island. Tracing her eyes along the edges of the shore while she walks, she sees the ghostly apparition of her mother, standing swollen and drenched by the sea. Blinking once, the girl stares at the figure in disbelief, blinking harder and resolving that it was indeed her mother. It had been long, but Liat can see the differences in her mother's face. The hard eyes that stare into the treeline and the scowl on her face is hard to miss. She cannot begin to fathom what hardship has brought the woman to this place looking like that- tired, pregnant, and angry.
The girl cautiously approached her mother, head stooped near her shoulders and ears carefully pushed forwards, fully expecting the woman to turn to ash the moment she touched her. Once close enough, Liat pressed her nose into the crook of her mother's neck, where throat met shoulder and breathed in. Despite smelling of some faraway place and stinking of the salty sea, the creature before her is her mother, and she is very real.
When Liat touched Volpe, she twisted her head, gazing along the dark line of skin that lines her back, happy to see that not a hair was out of place. This was her daughter, her love and her sun. Reaching downwards, she sets her teeth into the girl's messy mane and begins to groom her as if not a moment had been lost between the two of them, and they stood like that for some time before, at the gentle insistence of the dunskin girl, they moved inland. Where Liat was carefully built to suit the climate, her fur permanently shaggy due to the cold and her body voluptuous and stocky (she took after her father in these aspects), Volpe was lean and skinny beneath her belly that was bloated with pregnancy. Following the girl towards the trees, she tries not to shiver due to the cold and the fear that there was a monster waiting for her in the trees to take her back to the cove.