Maegi was watching her surroundings, but Natshana was watching her.  Initially, the other wolf's unfamiliar appearance was what caught the apothecary's eye.  It was her beauty that commandeered her gaze shortly thereafter, however.  She was a stroke of alabaster on the sands, a perfect composition of dove-white on the endless sea of beige.  

Natshana wondered what she was thinking, questioned if she should even intrude.  The healer's mother often complained that her daughter's gregarious nature would one day be her downfall, and perhaps that was the inevitable truth.  For the time being, though, she was content to chase her whims as they came to her.  So, she casually approached the seaside stranger.

"A new face," she commented in the common tongue, her accent giving away that she did not speak this language first.  Her eyes washed over Maegi like the tides often did at her feet but then she glanced out, over the waves beyond. "Would you mind some company?" A bold assumption, certainly, but Natshana was a staunch pillar of audacity.

Natshana was pleased to have seemingly been accepted.  Slowly, she meandered toward Maegi to join her, leaving an appropriate distance between them at her side so as to not impose upon her personal space.  She was content to sit like that, enjoying one another's company as they watched the sea.  Regardless of the apothecary's landlocked origins, she had grown fond of the temperament of the ocean -- sometimes calm, other times violent, and more often than not a complex mixture of the two extremes.

"Natshana," she gave her name without hesitation.  Perhaps she would have liked to remark on how much she fancied Maegi's name, yet she refrained.  She did not yet know what sort of compliments the other wolf preferred and, thus, was unsure if she would find the praise childish.  So, she moved on.

"Have you returned recently?" she wondered instead, curious enough about Maegi to want to keep the conversation flowing. "I may be assuming, but you seem far more at ease with the sea than I was when I joined."

Natshana nodded, trying to imagine what sort of life that must have been. "The pack I was born into lives exclusively in the woods," she explained further, as though it was necessary.  Her discomfort along the shore was likely evident.  The way she walked alluded to a wolf whose life was dictated by the certainty of solid earth beneath her paws.  She was unaccustomed to the shifting nature of sand.

When Maegi appeared to struggle with Huā's name, Natshana smiled somewhat.  She, too, had a difficult time parsing both the Empress' and pack's names in the same way she was at times clumsy with the common tongue.  She understood and sympathized.

"I came here on the order of my Commander," she answered honestly. "In my culture, the Commander's word is the law. She asked me to join the ranks, and so I did." Her words were purposefully vague, and she did not give out Praimfaya's name intentionally. "Why have you come?" the question was posed back to Maegi with a similar curiosity.

Husband. It was an interesting admission that struck Natshana solely because of her superficial interest in Maegi.  Beautiful as she was, it was no wonder she had already supposedly stolen someone's heart.  She narrowed her eyes as she silently tried to picture what Maegi's husband was like.

"Were you disappointed to find a pack has settled there?" she asked plainly, choosing frankness over flowery language.  In Maegi's pawsteps, Natshana might have been irritated herself.  What if Maegi and her husband wished to start a pack of their own in their former home?  A steady claim put a wrench in that.

"She did come," Natshana responded evenly to Maegi's first question. She would have to be careful not to give too many details away.  Praimfaya had enemies that her cousin was now privy to. "but she has gone, and I was told to remain. So, here I stay -- learning, and occupying my time." Yearning for a home far away from the reach of the sea.

"What are your trades, Maegi?"