"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
The name he gives is familiar and she thinks it’s close to where she’s been hanging around at Silver Cove, but she doesn’t know for sure and doesn’t want to seem stupid by asking. Maybe she’ll sneak around and investigate - it seems like a good idea to know where the different lands are, after all, even if her pack will transcend the need for borders. All information, she is trying to remember, can be handy if she bothers to try.
The question is flipped and she should have expected it, but somehow she doesn’t. For a moment, the doe-Mazikeen is quiet as she tries to figure out the answer to this very simple question. “Nowhere in particular - just around.” Is the vague answer she gives him when she veers into a small clearing, lush with grasses and dappled with flowers. The rising sun is brighter here and seems to glint off of the golden skin of the colt with her. She idly admires it for a brief moment before moving into the clearing and lowering her head to graze.
As much as she is annoyed with his secrets, she’s finding it easy to keep her own. Mazikeen doesn’t want to explain that her mother never brought her to where the rest of her family lived so they hung around in the common areas with her father. Or that she has found a new family in the Cove with delightfully wild creatures she admires with all of her young heart. How could she explain to someone that she doesn’t even feel all that guilty about how easy it was to find someone to replace Agetta as the focus of her young world?
Even though she does not believe the arrogant mask Firion wears is real, Mazikeen does not trust it to share these pieces of herself.
She is not self-aware enough to wonder if this is why he does not share with her, either.
After a moment, her doe-head rises from the grass and she poses another question. She has, momentarily, been effectively sidetracked from her initial mission and now finds herself curious about whether everyone’s first year of life has been like hers. Not quite unstable - but something close, surely. It’s easy to assume Firion has - since he’s not all that old and already planning on flying the coop so to speak.
