Julia catches her younger sister's hesitance with concern that shapes a line on her brow and causes her pale lips to tug downward. It wasn't like Starsonder to be so melancholy. The youngest member of their little family was usually bubbling like a brook with stories or as bright-eyed as a full moon with some discovery. JULIA
But Starsonder has nothing like that to share today.
The only thing that lifts between the sisters is the rise and fall of the apricot girl's lithe shoulders.
Her younger sister comes alongside her and leans into Julia's lanky shape in a way that is far more familiar than Starsonder's indifference. The gesture is a familial one that has been repeated from mother to father, sister to sister, mother to daughter since Julia had been wobbly-legged newborn. It was an expression of love and solidarity in their family and Julia has never thought twice about embracing any member this way; this action comes as naturally as breathing to the painted girl.
Cocking a hindleg, Julia situates herself in a way that @[Starsonder] could rest against her. "I don't know," she tells her younger sister honestly, and the buckskin girl looks up to the sky. She had wondered the same thing and the longer that Warlight's absence went on, the more pronounced it became. "There are many rounds in the Alliance," Julia explains. "And if Mama had to fight in more than one, it could take even longer." That was how it was explained to her.
She turns her slender head to gently nudge her younger sibling on her peach-colored haunch. "You know she'll come back as soon as she can," Julia says. It was a truth that she whole-heartedly believed (but then Julia has gotten her conviction because Warlight went to the Mountain and returned). Realizing this, the splashed girl smiles and follows with a more playful nudge. "So you should be having adventures so you have plenty of stories to tell her when she gets back."
Without knowing that her sister has already gone to Ischia, Julia brightens with an idea.
"What if we went on an adventure?"