Dragoncrest Cliffs good lord, what would that sound like without love.

as artaax speaks up, adding his own input to the information that blixen and furi provided wanlida and heda with, eske's gaze flickers to her second. there is a strange feeling in her chest as she takes in the girl's injuries; sorrow, pain, sympathy that the young girl was hurt and beyond that a steel edged protectiveness. eske's never been one for coddling, not for herself and certainly not towards others but she has an unexplained desire to want to reassure furi that it'll be ok, especially when she catches the young girl's gaze. she offers a small inclination of her head in an attempt to silently convey it. they should not have went after arrille, eske thinks, but it's not truly the fault of the children. they hadn't known just how dangerous the situation and very possibly arrille was ...and that was on the adults.

it was almost hard for eske to believe that a mere boy — a to-be dead boy if eske had anything to say about it — could be so much trouble. she holds onto the hope that providing things don't escalate between now and then that he will do to their neighbors as he did to drageda: betray them. once a traitor always a traitor in her mind. heda explains to the children the situation as it currently was and eske looks to her commander as her commander looks to her. something needed to be done about this before the tensions rose too high and shattered beneath the heat from both sides. from eske's perception of things, it already seemed fragile to begin with. she hopes that caiaphas or whomever leads the neighboring pack can be reasoned with, if that's what heda chooses to do, but peace talks is a contingency that eske is not willing to place all her cards on despite that she'd the one that had initially suggested it during her meeting with dio and heda. she shifts her weight beside her commander and reviews the information that they have so far and attempt to determine how that might bode for drageda.