Motherhood. The word made Beltane blink for she had never really considered the word for herself. Mother, yes, she supposed. She had become a mother at some point, though she had never identified with the word strongly. Or rather, she had never truly understood the word entirely. Her own mother, after all, had been absent for the most part, a name to her father Samhain and milk for Beltane but little more than that. Like her sisters, she thought. Names, memories, but not so tangible. Still, she had to admit that it was nice to receive yet another name. Beltane the Mother, Beltane of Motherhood. Her grin was small but there nonetheless, though she did not allow herself to dwell too deeply on the words. Rather, she focused on Avery, the woman’s broad smile a warm thing. Beltane could feel the woman’s smile warm the very air itself.

As she spoke though, Beltane’s grin had grown broader, a little wilder and toothier as she nodded. Ahhh, she sighed with understanding. Avery had been honest about her desire to fight, her eagerness to brawl with any and all challenges even if she did ultimately seek peace. It made sense to Beltane, then, that the quietness and stillness of the world had made the woman restless. Her energy had nowhere to go, nothing to extinguish itself on.

"Hmm, do you seek to...make a challenge, perhaps? Ah, you always could,” she said with the hint of a shrug, but she fell back into stillness as her eyes hardened on Avery. "Perhaps snakes have slithered back into Moladion, hm. Challenging things to hunt, they are. Who can say whether they even deserve to be hunted?” She mused, her eyes drifting up and away from Avery as she spoke, her lips pulling back into a grin once more. Then, she snapped her eyes back down to the woman. "Sometimes children chase shadows. Sometimes the shadows chase back. Perhaps you could hunt a shadow, a dark bringer or a shade.” She had smelt the boy Aspis on the borders, and she knew he could not have returned without the other shadows at his heels. He might have outrun them or shaken them off, but everybody cast a shadow. They’d be out there somewhere, prowling, hunting. Beltane did not mind. The Darkbringer and his kin existed for one reason or another, but she knew Avery might concern herself with the possibility. Many might, in fact. Perhaps, Beltane thought with a glance towards the badlands beyond Iromar, she ought to pass on the warning to those shadows too. Balance. Balance in knowledge.

But she liked Avery, and though she should not have allowed such liking to cloud her, she enjoyed the sin from time to time. She wondered if the Monarch had such interests. How far away did she want to chase the living ghosts of Iromar to achieve the peace she desired? Or perhaps Beltane had it wrong - had peace run its course? She hmm’d beneath her breath as she swayed ever so slightly with thought, thoughts all too easy to get lost in.