Around her the Taiga was alive, frothing with insects and small animals and birds, flitting from redwood to redwood. She was the largest thing around for miles, it seemed, a yellow beacon in amongst the washed out browns and blacks and greens of the forest in the fast fading light. It would be night time soon, but she felt no fear for the things that go bump in the night (not like she would have, long ago) only a kind of angry defiance. She is the blood of the tiger, and her head would not be bowed by little carnivorous shitheads.
 
 It had been some time since she had been here. Things looked different, and the twigs snagged in her yellow mane, and she found that her feet didn’t quite find the ground beneath her as well as it had used to. But it would come back with time, she was sure. She would put all of her determined energy into it, and there was a lot of that.
 
She came to a great pond that she vaguely remembered from her childhood, and decided this place was as good as any to wait for her sister to find her. She had heard rumours that her twin had returned and… had wanted to see for herself whether they were true.

Arete remembered the old world, fleetingly, before it had slipped away into a bleak nothingness. For some, it had crashed and churned and turned into little bits beneath their hooves… but that is not what the yellow and black girl remembers. It had been a confusing side-long slide into a world of silver and grey and fuzz and fog and clouds; and she remembers feeling very alone, and cold, and wet. Then everything had come back all at once. But that felt a long time ago, like it had happened to a different person altogether. She did not miss whatever land she had touched for only a moment of a second.

At first she thought that a sea-fog was rolling in, and her nose twitched slightly at the distinct, but not entirely unpleasant, aroma of salt, sand and wetness. But it’s not quite right, and sure enough, she picks out the dark figure amongst the trunks of the trees, black against the grey-black of the night. She is somewhat embarrassed it took so long to notice her in the first place. The stranger speaks (lightly, and airily, like she is more shadow than flesh), and Arete does not recognise the voice, nor the speaker. Ret is more than familiar with all the regular inhabitants of her homeland, and this is definitely not one of them. Must be either a newcomer, or someone lost – either way, the Taiga is not quite so kind to lonely strangers in the night.

”Good evening, stranger.” Ret says, looking with curiosity upon the matted mane, unkempt coat, sodden with water and dead leaves.

”You have found yourself in the Taiga.” she tilts her head, and takes a step closer to bridge the distance between them. ”How did you manage that? Did you get lost?” She pauses. ”I’m forgetting my manners. My name is Arete. May I have yours?” She cocks her hind hoof, relaxes down a bit, a smile on her dark lips.