By the gods, she had missed this. It's not that Sindri and Dun weren't fun to play with, but there was nothing quite like running around with Skadi, who might as well have been her twin too. They used to go on such wild adventures as foals, towing Thorin around through some re-enactment of their Da's old stories. They used to speak of going to the Nordurland, of returning to their family's homeland, and Deidre had just assumed they would take her, too. Even if her mother decided to stay behind like a stick in the mud, she knew that her Da would take her. He always indulged her, even if her antics made her momma roll her eyes and groan.

But he hadn't. Tigerlily and Sigurdr and Skadi and Thorin and Da had all packed up and left them all behind. Momma had gotten real, real sad again, and had taken them all to the Crossing to (very briefly) meet her big sister Roisin, before packing them all back to the Arch to live with Mr. Suleiman and his family. It had been chaos, and not even the good kind of chaos that came with fun and laughs. This one had come with tears and long, quiet nights where no one talked and momma spent hours speaking with Dances.

That was in the past now, though. Somehow she and Skadi would find Da, and then Deidre could reunite them and everything would just go back to the way it was. It would be perfect.

"Really?" She exclaims excitedly as her sister explained the breadth of the ocean; in her mind, it unfurled before her like a carpet until it wiped out the sky. "What's different from here then?" She questioned, her pace slowing as she turned to fix her sister with an inquisitive look. "Are the wolves bigger, with huuuuge teeth?" She pantomimed a wolf's snarl as she did so, her dark lips raised menacingly from what where clearly a set of herbivores teeth. "Or the foxes? Do they do tricks like the one's my momma talks about?"