He had made it through the mountains, by some stroke of luck, and had cross the sweeping flatlands only to be met with...
... more mountains.

Like a guy couldn't get a break around here. Oh well. At least these ones proved less out to kill him than those other ones had. That had been a mistake - and every time he neared a rise, his breath hitched as he prepared for the angst of finding some obscure and inconvenient pack snuggled up quaint in some valley or vale - politely in the way of his travel. But the worry began to ease, and turn entirely, the more times he was met with only a continual sea of stone.

He really found nothing much here other than the occasional trail of boars. He didn't have the manpower to hunt, so he ignored them (despite his watering mouth) and soldiered on with a growing edge to see what lay in the unseeable beyond. It was a feeling he didn't feel very often anymore - a jittering in his step and the crooked turn of mouth. The sun shone bright above him, but the air blew cool against his warming back. Yeah. The day was good, and he felt it.

He turned around.

Much like his sister, Tuathal liked to pretend he felt very little, but the quiver in her voice - it caught him. When he had been young he'd worn a tender heart on his sleeve, but things were different now. They had to be. If he could feel nothing, then maybe he could prove that he was strong. That he wasn't some sensitive scrap the world would eat the moment he stepped out from beneath his family's arching wings.

He'd long torn his heart from the fabric of his sleeve - only to find it still beating in his chest.

"Ceara," he repeated, and this time, a sliver of uncertainty tested through his breath. For as much as he wished his heart would turn cold, it really did hurt him to think he'd hurt her. "Did mom and dad send you?" To find me? his guarded words implied. He could remember the gist of the fiery argument he'd had with his parents the night he'd disappeared. He reckoned the entire Clan knew of their disapproval, but could really only guess. He had stormed out of there with a temper raging, and had run - something they hadn't expected him to do - until the scent of Blackthorn faded with his parent's distant calls.

He hadn't even been able to say goodbye - not even to Ceara - and he didn't realize how much he regretted that until now.

He wondered why. Why she had left - was it because of him? But she didn't give a reason. Only that she had, and on her own volition, and that was it. But he wanted more - he wanted to be the reason someone did something for once - the reason Ceara had. But the thought was so distant, and anyway, who was he kidding? This was Ceara. She had always been determined, and he would've been more surprised if his leave was why she'd left, than if her reasons were the same as everyone else's, and had nothing to do with him.

But the suspicion was there, along with a hitch in her voice that made him curious, and Tuathal covered a step toward her with ears piqued, to close some of their distance. But his sister's question caught him off guard, and he blinked, paused in his advance, and coughed. "A-ah, well - you know. Here, there, everywhere." What was he even looking for? "Thought there might be something interesting over these mountains. A pack, I guess. Somewhere to, I dunno. Start over." He gave a shrug, like the meaning to those words weren't really there, but he felt their weight regardless. "You could always - well - I mean, you going somewhere?"

More Blackthorns?

His jaw tightened, and the only thing that honestly kept him from just nope-ing out and heading back the way he came was, well - her. There was something different about her - just, really in her voice. Her words. A fragility. Frankly, it was weird, and he shifted with the discomfort of the position he found himself in. If she was vulnerable, and she was showing that - surely that meant something. He knew how that felt - and he knew well as ever he didn't want to be the one to break her. She meant too much.

Tuathal's ears fell askew and he found his eyes narrowed. Okay. Fine. He'd come. Of course he wanted to, for her - but - "You're sure no one there knows us?" He had to ask, double check, make sure his sister wasn't just making a hasty remark just to get him to say yes. Not all Blackthorns were bad, after all. Just some. "I can't be Tadpole again."

He snorted. There couldn't be just three. This part of the world seemed jacked with some whacked-out Blackthorn magnetic pull, and who's to say there weren't more just lurking in the shadows, rubbing their spontaneous little paws together for the best moment to pop up and make some grandiose reveal? That seemed a Blackthorny thing to do. They simply didn't come in small, quiet numbers.

But at least the ones Ceara listed only formed a blank canvas in his mind. They all sounded familiar enough, probably from stories their parents had told, but he couldn't put a face to any. He must've been too young when they'd left. Lynx, Colt - those were nicknames for sure, and he felt a glow of jealousy. Why couldn't his parents have taken a second longer to think of something like that for him?

At the end of things, he would just have to trust Ceara on this.

Tuathal followed his sister as he recalled the collective misadventures of the North. Trouble put it lightly. "Everyone I meet thinks I'm out to bite their heads off, so that's something. I mean, I know I'm not that smooth around the edges, but c'mon. If you slink up on someone without saying anything, or poke someone when they clearly can't see who's poking them, what do think they're gonna do? Blow you rainbow kisses and frolick through the woods?" He snorted a laugh, but his brow furrowed. He remembered too clearly the fear written on Adeline and Larkspur's faces when he'd snapped at their approach. The thought still left his tongue tasting bitter. He wanted respect, but he didn't want that.

"Well, not exactly - " but he found himself laughing, and didn't think it was all that important to correct his words. "But I know, right?" Lame was what it was. Ceara got what he was saying, and her validation was all he needed right now.  At least she was on his side, with an opinion that really mattered.

He scoffed at her remark. "Got a bounty on my head, and a pack after my tail, but yeah, that's all." Of course he'd been staying out of trouble - intentional, at least, and Tuathal aimed to flick his tail against his sister's hip to accentuate his jest. "I don't go looking for trouble, you know. It just... sort of likes to find me."

He was glad to hear she'd been keeping safe, but at her mention of *cough* interesting people he felt his brow raise and his gaze slip curiously towards her. "Oh?" The way she paired her denial of trouble with them didn't sit comfortably in his head, and after a pause he asked, "What made these folk so interesting?"

Wait, Ceara actually believed him? "I'm kidding, you dingus." He aimed to bump his shoulder against her's, but her misunderstanding made him realize - again - that he still had a long way to go in learning how to properly toe the line between serious and sarcasm. The closest he'd gotten to aggravating any pack was probably Tindome, but even then he hadn't been trespassing, and they hadn't been much of a pack. A man and his pregnant wife? Surely they had more pressing business to attend to, rather than trailing a harmless loiterer all the way across the wilds.

He stuck out his tongue in a playful quirk. Trouble would always find him, but he hoped it'd stay well away from her. Ceara's answers made sense, and Tuathal took them at face value. If Colt was anything like them, surely trouble would be stirring right behind him, too - hopefully only of the benign kind. "Bacana," he offered her one of her silly slang (assuming he knows her slang??), and flicked his ear, the word still tasting funny on his tongue, "Well, at least one of us is having luck with the folk down here. You'll introduce me, right?" He played it cool, but his nerves wrung with his final syllable. Provided they'd even let him in. Provided his sister even wanted him to stay. She'd only really asked him to walk her home - and that usually entailed leaving once his duty was done.

A smile tugged at his lips, quirking them ever so slightly up when she checked against him, and he returned the favour with a jostle of his own, in the expected brother-like fashion. How he'd gone from riding solo to potentially meeting his sister's new entire family flew well over his head, but he didn't complain. Ceara found them worthy of sticking around and working for, and that meant something.

But was he actually ready to do that himself? Of course he was; he'd always been ready - but didn't he leave the Clan to get away from the Blackthorns? Of course he did - but Ceara. Did she want him to stay? He thought so - but her words still left him with a taste of doubt. "I'd dig that." His lips still quirked in a smile, even as he sought to make his next words as gentle as a kid like him knew how, "Don't know if I'll stay or not. Or if your pack'll even want a rangy thing like me. I think I just need to think a few things through before I decide anything like that. But I'll be around." And he watched her from the corner of his eye, gauging her reaction. How she responded would sway his decision perhaps even more than Ceara knew.