Days passed. Her mother left. Rethe regressed. The joy she'd experienced in the Commons wilted, and left in it's wake an ache that she could not ignore. In the same way that Rethe often believed she would have been happier as a girl to have never known her mother, she was certain that if she had never gone to the Commons she would not be struggling so badly now. To have not known a mother's love or the flirtations of a mare she liked would have softened the blow in their absence.

But you could not undo what had been done.

And so she became the ghost of the little girl again.

She walked the same paths. Drank from the same pools. Ate from the same meadows, the same fields, the same thickets. She avoided what little herd the Bay claimed and lived mostly by moonlight, her dark coat an armor against being perceived. She would have likely continued on in this vein, burying more and more of herself, piece by piece, were it not for the sound of a soft whicker to break her from her reverie.

Rethe turns toward it, tension in her shoulders, and does not immediately reply. Her eyes are guarded as she looks upon Tefnut, uncertain what to make of the bouquet of flowers she holds in her mouth. It is a gesture unlike any that has been offered to her before, and she has no idea how to interpret it, no reference from which to pull. It confounds her, and in doing so, worms its way beneath the guard she'd raised around herself.

"You... you what?" She asks. Exasperation colors her voice, but no cruelty. The dark mare looks away, her ears tipped nearly back to her poll, and then glances at Tefnut again, utterly unsure of herself. She wants to push back against Tefnut's claims, to proclaim them too little, too late, but her defenses are more mirage than truth. She is still a girl. Still hurting. Still lost.

And the thing she wants more than anything in the world is to belong somewhere.

Rethe, however, has absolutely no idea what to do with flowers. They smell nice, to be certain, but there are no vases. No need for decorations. The clover at least smells appetizing, but she is struck by the strange feeling that she might offend Tefnut by eating her offering, and so with an invisible blush warming her cheeks thrice over, Rethe takes the bouquet with embarrassment and lays it at her feet where - to her - it glows like a beacon, an embodiment of her out-of-place-ness.

Still awkward, still standing in place, Rethe speaks again though her gaze does not touch on Tefnut again save for brief, fleeting glances. "What do you want to know?"