When she sees her sister’s face, Arkana breaks out in a wide grin and her heart thumps with joy. Different as they are, there are some things she would share with no one other than her oldest sister. As they bump noses and Sabran asks where she has been, Arkana almost hushes her, though Sabran had been speaking quietly, and glances around them to be doubly sure there’s no one nearby.

“Sab,” she says, her words tumbling out quickly as she lowers her head in a conspiratorial whisper, “You won’t believe what happened. I spent the night with a… with a stallion.” Her mismatched eyes widen as the last word leaves her lips, and a girlish giggle bubbles up from her throat, until she realizes that her words could be misconstrued. “Not in that way! God, can you imagine? Mother would kill me. Twice.”

She throws her head up with a sigh, forelock falling away from her face as she stares dreamily at the dappled canopy overhead. “It was amazing. I swam to the Crossing and was so tired I immediately took a nap. When I woke up, the sun was setting, and there he was: Kaiju. He’s the tallest horse I’ve ever seen, Sab, but he was so kind and gentle and he took me to a stream so I could get a drink and then kept me company all night and his eyes... His eyes! They’re like, friggen’ gold!

“But… speaking of Mother, did she… ask after me? Did she notice I was gone?” Arkana’s gaze is fixed on her sister, all the joy melted from her expression. Part of her hopes that if Evren had noticed her disappearance, that Sabran would have had the sense to cover for her and say that she’d gone to spend the night in the Prairie. After all, out of the two Arkana has always been the more adventurous sister, pushing boundaries while Sabran watches from the sidelines.