Nothing could dampen the excitement that Rethe felt as they travelled to their new home, her real home all along. Not even the mysterious presence of a mare that Rethe did not recognize that seemed to have quite suddenly become Tefnut's new best friend and constant confidant.

The Bay was good at distracting her. It always had been, even when she'd been a little filly, grieving the absence of her mother, she had always found something here to keep her occupied. Later, when she was grown and past the age in which one typically left the nest, she'd found a million more reasons to stay. Paths she hadn't explored, summits she hadn't climbed, forest pools she hadn't swam in.

There was always something.

Today, that something was her mother. At first, Rethe hadn't expected Kohelet to stay here. In truth, she hadn't expected any in her family to ever give up their father's home willingly, but she had categorically refused to dwell on that thought too long. Emhyr could make his own choices, and the days of legacies stretching across the islands and generations had well and truly died with Rethe's grandfather.

It was a wild west now, where loyalty was only important to the masses as long as it was convenient.

For years after Kohelet's return, Rethe had been a prickly and unhappy shadow at her side as her littlest sister grew up. She had been bitter about Kohelet's decisions, anxious about her father, and uncertain of her own place in this new life, and had - regrettably - taken that out on her mother most of all.

Seeing her now gave rise to a strange feeling of longing in the black mare's heart as she rushed forward to embrace Kohelet, their necks entwining wordlessly as Rethe held back tears.

"You're back,", the Bay's old matriarch murmured as she pulled away and brushed the forelock from her daughter's eyes. There was a tiredness to her expression, a weariness that seemed to be soul-deep. It hurt Rethe to look at, but she suspected the cause. Kohelet had never recovered after Fell had left. She kept trying. Kept being there. But she never came back to herself without him around.

And now that there was no family left? She was a ghost of herself.

"I came with the new leader," Rethe answered by way of explanation, her ears tilting forward and back. Her mother pressed gently for more information and Rethe provided it, filling her dam in on the matters of her life since they had separated. They laughed and cried and teased each other until some of the tight band around Rethe's chest eased.

When Kohelet retired at dusk to her normal bedding spot, Rethe watched her go soundlessly, still too restless to sleep. She turned, instead, to the rocky shoreline of the Bay, where she'd spent so many days as a girl on watch, waiting for the same mare she'd just spent an afternoon with. The waves were a lullaby to her, their crescendo against the many boulders a respite for her ears and she closed her eyes to listen, trusting her feet to remember the path.