West - she spends her days going west. The pull is incessant, resembling an old magic with whom she has become unacquainted due to death and rebirth. In the limited understanding allowed to her these first months, she tries not to question much, instead obeying the powerful urge to travel west.

The lands are not as her childish mind remembers them, for she spent the majority of her life and indeed the entirety of her childhood in pre-Reckoning Beqanna; so when unfamiliar lands and their accompanying smells pass her by, Noori worries.

Vaguely she remembers dark powers being afoot in this new land, or else something akin to death; she thinks of the pale mare she found by the riverside some weeks ago, of how the blood dripped from her nostrils and how her every bone could be read through the thin veil of her dying skin. Noori wonders sometimes if she, too, had been dying of a sickness; but for now the child remains untouched by the contagion, and her weak mind abandons the somber topic after only a moment's retrospection.

Upon the dawn of her second week traveling westward, a new scent bombards her thin bark nostrils: ash. At first she balks, turning and fleeing out of pure instinct; the smell of burning is akin to the smell of melting flesh to a horse comprised of wood and spring. It takes hours and courage from what remains of her adult-self for the tiny porcelain nymph to reappear from whence she ran, trembling and wide-eyed in an unblinking green glow of a stare. With each step towards Tephra, the dark green glow emanating from the depths of the blood red cracks lining the pale white of her bark flesh strengthens, pulsating and reverberating as she approaches her final destination.

As she nears the base of the volcano, that incessant pull that she has felt since her rebirth finally ceases: whatever she came here for is wont to find her soon. Exhausted and still troubled by the scent of burning, Noori walks tightly in a circle before collapsing in a heap, eyes finally closing. With the sun high overhead, the dogwood flowers lining the red willow-fronds of her mane and tail slowly open, accepting the energy of the celestial fixture with the efficiency of one a hundred times her age.

As the sun bears down on the small lump of white wood and pale green-centered flowers, a stranger approaches. At least, Noori interprets the sound of the hooves colliding with the rock-strewn earth as such, figuring in her delusioned youth that no one truly knows of her. Though she holds some memories of her past life, the clarity with which she views them is not yet enough to allow her any true grip on how that reality and this one intermingle - she cannot identify who is who to her then, for these days, everyone is new to the her she is now.

The walking stops, and a familiar scent overrides the smell of ash. The tree stump's nostrils wiggle from where they are lodged between her knees; but her exhaustion momentarily demands her attention, successfully convincing her to ignore the smell and the silence. Fluttering between the land of dreams and the land where a volcano nearby spews ash and smoke, Noori's dogwood flowers shift lazily in the breeze, happily drinking up the powerful rays of light which re-energize the alien creature.

Mother?

That word, however, sufficiently rouses the babe.

Mother? She thinks to herself. Mother...

With a subtle cracking sound, she unfurls. Legs stretch and neck straightens, the motion of it absurdly tree-like as the process of awakening begins. The strange, lethargic movement continues for nearly a minute before her eyes open wide enough to see, and her legs move quickly enough to bring her to her hooves. When at last she does stand before the familiar stallion, it is with a frown of wonder and with parted, girlish lips.

Words bubble somewhere in the deep recesses of her conscious mind, but for now, they fail her.

Instead, the magician calls forth a creature whom she immediately recognizes but cannot immediately describe; it takes less time than she anticipated for the thing to obey her command. It must be eager, having lurked nearby. When it arrives, a sharp whine pierces the air between mother and son, perhaps sensing the tension that Noori cannot. He warns her with his cry, but she neglects to hear it.

The wolf is small, scrawnier than those which Daemron has been surrounding himself with as of late; a male, as black as night with luminous yellow eyes. His lips part and come together again in a show of need and submission, eyes flashing from she who commands him, and to he who he loves. Noori blinks carefully at the canine, then stretches her tiny nose towards him, brushing its firmness against his powerful jaw. Rest, she thinks, and the wolf obeys, falling into a heap of long black legs and closing his eyes immediately.

Noori looks up, considers the chestnut with willow-frond hair.

"Daemron..." she murmurs at last, frowning as the word befalls her lips without her permission or understanding. Needing to grasp on to something that does make sense, she looks sharply to the wolf, then back at her son. "You neglect members of your pack... why?" Something must be busying him, busying his mind; she wonders, uselessly, just what that which worries him may be.

I won't be made to leave you alone, mother. The words are by no means gentle, but their sternness quiets the girl's rampant sobs with a fatherly effectiveness. And indeed, her stuttering gasps are reduced to only whimpers when Daemron's muzzle meaningfully connects with the tiny slope of her shoulder. Not like this.

As a calmness rushes over her, inspired solely by the compassion of the wolfson, some irregular representation of understanding returns to the child. She knows, as she gazes blurrily up at that irregular blaze, that the stallion standing above her is her son. She knows, despite her poor, baby-like senses, that she has hurt him in her past life. And, worst of all, she knows exactly how.

Subdued now, and ready to obey her saviour, the small figure rises up from the dirt and the ash. He mentions family but it is all too clear now just how ironic and painful that is, for him and for her, but especially for both of them together. He needn't even speak the words he thinks for her to know them to her core - but some semblance of her adult self infiltrate's the child's body in the wake of her emotional outbreak, and she clings to the sanity found there as she follows the tall, chestnut stallion to wherever he might choose.

She is tired, despite having photosynthesized prior to Daemron's arrival. That is the price of adulthood, the babe realizes. A constant, undying exhaustion, though due in no part to a lack of sleep.

Eventually, he leads her to an unfamiliar copse of trees, though it smells strongly of him. Words burble into Noori's throat but she stays them as she has for the whole journey to this place, knowing that it would be better to wait for her son's lover to help him recover from what she needs to tell him. Still, the urge to spill it all now and to once again fall into a miserable, pitiful heap is undeniably strong; but she wrestles through it, heart rate increasing drastically as she realizes that which is about to unfurl.

Halting just away from where the mare he approaches stands, Noori watches the two embrace. It is automatically clear that the two hold love for one another in a way that the small creature knows that she does, too - but that information and the name Trekk remain yet elusive, evading her understanding despite her efforts to pinpoint the name. Instead, she is distracted by Daemron's introduction of her; shivering slightly, the girl's green glow intensifies, casting the red which traces the cracks of her alabaster bark a strange, bloody brown.

Pyxis expresses her confusion, and her desire to help; but the exhaustion from before is returning with a vengeance this time, and so Noori makes quick work of something that truthfully required months worth of discussion.

Leave it to her to fuck up the part where she tries to fix her fuck ups.

"Dae," she speaks, the word evidently clearer and more knowledgeable than the ones she'd spoken previously. Raising her sap-stained face to his, the girl's wide, pupilless eyes blink once, and then not again. "I love you, and I'm sorry for being a burden. I am also sorry, because - I lied." No tone of whining or keening enters her voice; she will not again lower herself to the level of begging for pity. "About your father. Eight sired only Cerva. Another stallion sired Nihlus. And your father - is Trekk." She speaks the name, and suddenly realizes that it had been the one evading her memory just minutes before. This revelation does not show on her face, for its white length is somber and, admittedly, tired. "We have many children together... perhaps someday, you can meet them."

Yawning, the adult Noori recedes into a deep, dark, unreachable place at the core of her being. In her place, the girlish nymph is left, blinking in a silly manner at the adults before her. "It was nice to meet you both... Thank you for taking care of me."

And, with sleepy steps, the child clambers over to Dae. Stretching, she kisses his shoulder, and yawns again; and, in the next breath, she plops down to the ground, legs folded neatly beneath her. Before long, the sweet sound of a baby sleeping serenade the couple - the couple, upon whom a bomb has just been dropped.