For a day she'd lingered beside the sea, reveled in the brine and the surf, turned over her mangled thoughts and gathered her courage. And then she had turned back, headed south and left behind the coast. It had been a tense, uncomfortable journey, avoiding all others.  a man will take whatever he wishes. She had not known it, she had been naive, stupid, but now she knew. She had been lodged deep inside the heart of Morningside, felt their protection for so long that stepping beyond their borders felt like plummeting into the depths of the sea, where uncertainty lived and dark things beckoned. 

But she had made it, and at the border she faltered, suddenly unsure if she would be welcomed. She had come all the way here despite his threats, the fear in her heart, and now doubts plagued her. She darted across the border quite suddenly, feeling quickly a kind of relief that came with the familiarity of the wood and the protection that a line on the ground offered her. She stepped deeper into the territory, ears slicked back against her head, attempting once, twice, to muster up the courage required to howl her presence. 

She did it quickly, a short, hoarse howl that rent the stillness of the overcast morning, and quickly tapered off to more silence. She sat then, pulling the harsh angles of her body close and curling in on herself in the slightest, gaze darting at every flicker of movement, fear battling with the relief of being home.

the certainty delight felt in tindómë's future had been swept from beneath his feet in one strike, leaving him scrabbling for any sense of control. burke's death had been imminent but it's arrival is no less devastating; he had known brienne would be leaving them but the timing. he needs mato --

-- who is unavailable. he feels the start of something bitter in his throat and swallows it down quickly. there's no time for that. they need to organize some sort of.. something, a goodbye to burke, a proper one (even though, he thinks nastily, everyone who knew burke is long gone or absent now). delight will just have to figure it out on his own.

the frail sounding howl breaks his thoughts. it takes a second to place it and then he takes off, quickly arriving on the scene with a breathless "anatha?" the girl's absence had been taken to be yet another in a series of abandonments, a bit of a sting, but, well, it wasn't the first time. but now he wonders if this is a repeat of what happened to brienne, and if yet again he's failed a packmate in not sending out a search. she doesn't look well, exactly, though she seems uninjured from what he can see. "where did you go?" the morwinyon asks, his tone not one of scolding or anger, but a softer, more worried thing.