She had been there before. Perhaps not in this life, but perhaps only in the dormant halls of her dreams. 

The ocean would always be home, it would always carry a fragment of her heart – and her mother’s soul. She had sought the sealorn matriarch, oft dreamt of finding the wraith in the froth and fray of the coming tide. One day, she imagined, she would come to find the pale figure against the grain of sand. Though, not in the way she’d been found before. She would not be devoured by the brine, and the wake of the tide – drenched, beaten. Dresden would be strength, forged in the strongest iron – of the sea itself. Of course, a fool’s errand, a child’s folly: she knew that day would never come. She’d avoided the coastline in her journey, assuming if any sought her, they would first travel there. But, try as she might: it spoke to her. It called across the distance. The low roar of its brontide voice swayed over harrowed plains, winding through forests and along mountainsides still draped in the pale haunt of winter. Its rumble had once been her lullaby, with a younger version of herself tucked against her mother’s breast. With her siblings sealing the girl in their cherished and well missed warmth, and their father’s brogue carrying them into lands of slumber, filling them with passing images of fantasy.

Nothing made her lonelier, than the coastline.

And though, she could not bear to be parted from it for too long, she found herself inland. She’d found her way through this new found land, this valley. Despite the haggard build of her weary form, she’d managed to scramble and sway, step and stumble towards something any less akin to the home that she’d known. It filled her heart with equal parts dread and hope. She knew she would not be the only one to have made their way there; it was far too vast – to far reaching to be entirely empty. Their scents held to the briny breath of the cove, the sillage of past whispers and sweet nothings bound themselves to the very pulse of a breeze. A wintry chill burned into her bones, seeping beneath the rust of her pelt, and she’d sought sanctuary. She’d give herself to the mountainous echoes, much like her beloved tide, to the sounds of the wind brushing against the damp stone. She could not say how long she’d laid there in the din of the wilderness, could not know if it had been days or hours. She desired sleep, toiling with nights of restless slumber filled with the faces of all those she’d left behind. It was not the time, with an autumnal storm brewing across the heavens. 

The air was thick with electricity, the skies dark and pregnant, eager to give life to a torrent of rain. Her eyes followed the clouds crawling against it's brumous arch, her eyes heavy and her heart worn and bruised. Hunger inched across her empty stomach, begging for a meal the girl was not quite skilled to fetch on her own. Hunger, and further bidden by a need for shelter, she'd yip -- calling out to those who lingered unseen.