She startled at the sound of someone approaching, hastily yanking down the armor of unpleasantness with which she faced most of her days. After regaining her footing, she greeted the stranger with pinned ears and a lashing tail, as if either thing would undo the damage that had already been done. The black mare dipped her head and hastily wiped away her eyes, hating that someone - anyone - had witnessed her moment of weakness.

It was one thing to finally let her mother in, but a stranger? Unacceptable.

She quickly realized two things, however. First, that the stranger was just girl which was less infuriating than it would have been if it were Aadrika or Apex, and that the girl seemed just as chagrined at interrupting Rethe as Rethe was about being interrupted. It quelled some of the fire, and so she turned her stony gaze outward again.

It had seemed clear enough to Rethe that she wanted to be alone, but the girl - her cousin, though she could not know it - seemed oblivious. It struck a strange, poignant nerve in the dark mare's heart and she had to fight back another round of sadness and nostalgia for the days when her little brothers had done similar things. Rethe was easy to provoke, always wearing her heart on her sleeve, especially when it was sad, and especially, especially when it was angry.

She sighed, but there was no real malice in it, and peered at the girl from the corner of her eye before forcing her gaze forward again. Maybe if she just ignored her, the girl would take the hint. The last thing Rethe wanted to do was explain herself to a child.

Is it safe here? The question shocks Rethe out of her forced apathy and she turns to the girl with a clouded brow. It was... strange, to say the least, to realize that she didn't really know the answer to that question before. For all of Rethe's foalhood, adolescence, and until recently, even her adulthood, the answer had been unequivocally yes. Tinuvel was ruled by family, knit together by blood.

Or it had been.

Now it was just as broken as the rest of the islands.

Rethe blinked but nodded. "It is." Though she had her own grievances with Tefnut's desire to be a guardian angel even when she was not required to be, the dark mare trusted that Tefnut would protect those in the territory. However, as the yearling clarifies that she meant the Cove herd - not the Bay - Rethe frowns again. "I doubt it."

She knew now that a different stallion owned the Cove. One that was neither family nor particularly friendly to it. It made her feel strange to know that her grandsire's home now lay in the hands of a stranger, but there was nothing to be done about it unless she randomly decided to lead her own territory - a thought that was as unpleasant as it was terrifying.

"Why don't you want them to know?" Rethe asks, against her better judgment. The last thing she needs is to insert herself in some Desert herd nonsense when she's still reeling from the changes in the Bay, but it's hard not to wander. After all, its not often that a yearling requests anonymity from her birth herd.