Even though Teya had seemed skeptical about Brecheliant relocating anywhere else, Dwin did not let the thought go that easily. They had recently acquired two new recruits, which was good, because they had more capable people to help run the family business. But this also meant a larger strain on the resources. For now everyone had enough, but the young hunter was not convinced that this was going to stay this way forever. 

Therefore she took her duty of scouting nearby lands very seriously. She left home, whenever that was possible, and preferably before any of her younger siblings noticed her leaving. The deal with Frolic was still on and active, but despite the girl's determination to achieve greatness in the trade, Dwin did not think that she would be a useful company, when it came to assessing the situation critically and listing the strong and weak points of any particular area. 

On her own she had followed the river from the lake, where salmon flourished, all the way up to a small forest, that held traces of once being grand and impressive, but lied in ruins now, hidden by numerous birch and aspen trees. Dwin stopped right at the edge of the forest to take a good look at it first and then decide, where to try and find a proper entrance to it. Fighting and pushing her way through the thick undergrowth felt like a waste of time. 

Dwin turned to see, who had called her name, and met a grayscale she-wolf coming her way. She looked familiar, so familiar that remembering her name should not have been a problem, but... for the second time in her life, she felt like a total idiot, who did not know, what to do next. Continue to pretend and find out the name in a nonchalant and careful manner, or state first-hand, that the other one had a fine chance of introducing their wonderful person again. 

"Oh, hey!" she replied, taking some steps towards the she-wolf and greeted her in a friendly-neutral manner. She smiled for a bit, trying to find the least embarrassing way of stating the obvious and then sighed and just let her mind come up with a crazy story. "I recall meeting you and I recall us talking a great deal more than it should have been polite from a kid my age then, but your name has simply evaporated from my memory," she told her. "So, unless it is a quirk of my mind - a very likely explanation - I will take that you are of the witching sort. Probably revealed some trade secrets to me and wiped my brain folds clean, when I was not looking," she suggested grinning. 

"Heph... Heph, yeah, I do know this is not the first time I hear your name," Dwin said, nodding her head. Suddenly her face lit up, as an idea entered her mind. "What if..." her expression fell, because just as fast as that idea had appeared, it left her with an unfinished sentence and out of reach. Laughing madly somewhere in a dark corner of her mind. Curse you! She swore, reached out with her claw and after some rummaging around brought the idea kicking and screaming out in the light of her mind again. 

"I do not remember much beyond that, but just think, what an interesting story it would be about a lass, who everyone met, but who no one remembered afterwards. She knew she existed, because of she was capable of thinking. But in the eyes of the others she stopped existing the moment they closed their eyes," it was such an interesting idea, with such a great story-potential, but she knew that she did not have the skill to make it grow and flourish. 

"Well, I am just scouting the area, figuring out, whether there is anything worth hunting out there," she said. "Winter's coming and such. What about you? Do you have a place to call home for the harsh season?"

"Oh, but that is just the premise. A lot could happen and who is to tell that person that no one can remember cannot have a happy ending. Say - she met another one like her? Or they became spies or something like that? Because the catch is that, while everyone forget her, she has good memory of them," Dwin sighed. Another idea that would never be developed further and told to the end. 

"Moontide? There are quite a lot of packs with "moon" in their names. Moonglow - that's, where my sister Dee lives. Moonspear - a friend of my other sister lived there. Moontide - are they of the same family or this is simply a new trend out there?" she asked curiously. What would Brecheliant be called if it was not Brecheliant? Mooncheliant? Moondera? As in Moon and caldera fused together. Moonhawk caldera? Actually Moonhawks sounded kind of cool. 

"Does not seem to be inhabited by anyone at the moment," she remarked, having not caught any scent of permanent residents. "So - your pack out there - what is it like? Are people decent? Not a crazy cult?"

"Yeah, she is in Moonglow. Sorry to say that, but from what she has told me... they seem peculiar," Dwin thought that telling outright that they were weird would be rude. After all Heph was okay and she recalled her being pretty much the same person earlier too. However, if at any point she began to try to persuade Dwin leaving her home and joining the new group, she would refuse. 

"She has quite a lot of ambitious daughters - that Moonwoman. I don't think that any of ours are the same way," she expressed her respect. Because Brecheliant... did not work like that. There could always be just one magical forest. A spinoff would simply not work, because... it would not be the same. Dwin could not quite put her paw on, what it was that made it that way. 

"Well, they do have some odd marriage rules, however. There is a fellow there that wants to marry my sister, but instead of just asking her and getting a - yes! - he has to gain the favour of our parents and wants to pay them off with gifts?" she referred to the brideprice. "It is meant well, of course, but my sister is not an item of trade. She is a person," she had not told this concern to Dee, because she would probably not see that way. 

"I am not sure that a wandering husband would be an asset to any bride," Dwin remarked on Heph's list of trades the grooms-to-be offered to their chosen girls. "It does not sound that bad then, but... well... isn't it kind of showing off as well? Say - there is a guy, how puts up monstrous effort only up until the wedding and after that - turns out that he is a slug," that could well happen. She trusted Dee's good judgement, but there was always a risk. What if that Kivaluk guy was also acting upon his mother's strict orders to pull his bearings together and act good, until he could be married off suitably and become the wife's problem to deal with?

"Besides - shouldn't it be the other way round? Shouldn't one impress with gifts and prices and only then get an approval?" she asked. "And, what if... he brings all the great things, but none of them are, what the bride and her family wants?" In short - the relationships were already hard to navigate and having marriage traditions complicated the matters unnecessarily.

"Yeah, but most edible things tend to expire and as much fun as fancy bones and gems and other trinkets are, they won't feed you, when you grow hungry," Dwin mused, trying to imagine herself in Dee's place (that would never happen, but she enjoyed opportunities for a mental exercise). What would she ask for the man to do for her? What would she want to have in the partner, should she ever be in the position to choose? Hunting prowess? Demonstrations of strenght and wit? Storytelling? These were all things she could do herself, which meant that she did not know. The closest she got was that he had to surprise her. 

"What would you ask the man, who wanted to court you, do?" she asked Heph, who had proven to be a very engaging conversation partner with interesting views and angles of life. "Or are you already courted and married off and settled?" she added. "In that case - what did the guy do to impress you?" 

"Or in death," Dwin managed to interject, finding it odd that one would have to wait for the next life to truly know everything, when it might as well be that you were the same clueless idiot on the second go as you had been oin the first. "Death is the only certain thing - mom says. And you kind of become eternal, when your body dies. It disintegrates and continues to live as something else. There is some debate of, where the soul goes, of course," she mused.

Heph did not sound very convinced about that Rodyn-wolf. Dwin would have expected at least a half of excitement Dee had felt for the prospect of marriage and building a family, but she got a completely different vibe from this lass. It was as if... as if... the guy wanted to get married more than she did. That she went along with it just because... heh... Why were relationships so difficult? Why were social constructs so complex? They just messed with people's lives. 

"Yeah, I don't think you will get to go out and travel much around, once you get married. I speak from experience - he will not want to travel around, he will let you, but he will be very obviously unhappy about it and in the end you will give up on that to make him happy. Saw that happen to a... friend of mine," she told her mom's story. "Is this - something you really, really want or you do it because everyone your age does it or you think they have to do it?" she asked. "I just... I may have to face the same decision one day myself. Therefore it is good to know different perspectives."

"Yeah, but isn't it in partnership that you have to give up a little of yourself to make it work?" Dwin asked, while not disagreeing with Heph. She was fiercely independent and valued that very much. It would really have to be someone special for her to give it all up. Or at least part of it. "All this concept about two halves of the same apple or something like that. It is about making something greater together. Two independent apples cannot make a single apple," she finished the sentence, the intonation going up as if she was not sure herself and looked for Heph to find the right way of, what she had wanted to express. 

"Well, I feel sorry for my friend too, but then it seems that she is accepting the life as it is and does not complain," she added. "And it does seem that she has exchanged her wanderlust for something just as valuable and beautiful. I mean... I have never asked, but I have a strong feeling that in the end we choose our adventures. She gave up the quantity for a long-term quality one," while Dwin would never 100% agree with her mom's choices in life, she was well-aware that without them she would not be standing here talking to other people. 

"A good point. I think that the river ends, when it becomes the sea and then the ocean," she said. "But people are not waterways, so I do not think that this metaphor applies to us," she pointed out. "Though one could discuss the fates of individuals, when they come together to create something big. How they lose their individual selves in the name of the greater good. That the good is more important than the individual. I could not live with that," she said. 

"Have you always known you wanted kids someday or is it something that you grew aware of over time?" Dwin asked, wondering if having a change of heart in the matter was something that usually happened. Hoping to hear that Heph - like her - had been solidly against the idea before and that change of heart had come later. Because - time and time again she had wondered, whether her choice to remain unmarried and childless was simply a phase, or whether there would come a day, when something would click in her brain and she would be like - oh, I want a baby!

Huh, interesting. Maybe circumstances in life mattered as well. It seemed that Heph had toyed with the idea, but the place had not been there, nor - Dwin guessed - a proper person to have them with. Her mom's marriage to dad had always seemed as a fact of life. She knew each had had a life of their own before that as well, but she had never truly dwelled on, what their ideas about the future had been then. Had Maia wanted to ever have kids, before she had met Eljay? She decided to ask her, when they would have time to sit down for a proper conversation next. 

"Oh, I had that honor this year. In some places my fur hasn't still fully regrown," she turned to show a patch on her tail, where the fur was noticably thinner. "And I can assure you that imagined kids are way more obedient, nice and law-abiding than the actual little tyrants," she told, now wondering, if Heph had had any actual experience with kids long-term. 24/7 like. "I have heard that giving birth is no fun either, so...." she grinned. "Well, I have not recovered mentally from this summer's ordeal, so I am quite happy to have an extended break from kids in general," she concluded. 

"What about you? Work on thickening that pelt of yours already?" she smiled.

"Well, dealing with little kids until they have the brain capacity to be normal and reasonable adults, is a different kind of dangerous and challenging," Dwin agreed. "Super-messy and chaotic. No plotline. Nothing. No wonder the legendary story-tellers of the past choose to dwell on linear story-lines and leave the ensuing chaos after the magical "happily-ever-after"," she laughed. Now that the children had grown up and no longer needed her, she found that she was able to look at the experience as a whole and all the nasty details had begun to blur and fade. Maybe it was the nature's way of making sure that you procreated even after not so pleasant experiences. 

"Didn't you say earlier that Rodyn wanted to marry you?" Dwin arched her eyebrows, because this was exactly, what she had concluded from Heph's earlier mention of the man setting her own bride price. "Or bigamy is a thing in Moon-packs?" she had heard that such thing existed. Mostly men having many wives. But it happening the other way round? Huh... oddly enough, the sworn-to-never-ever-ever-marry gal found this idea very interesting. Even worth experimenting with. 

"So, is that Phox guy a person you think you will mesh well with?" Dwin asked, pouncing at the indication that someone else had told Heph that this would be good thing for her. Of course, she had no doubt that this weathered and experienced nomad had enough common sense to make her own decision. But this did not mean that adults would not do weird or stupid things and going into marriage with someone that was good on paper could be one of them. Older folk called it being pragmatic.

"And does he know that the Moonwoman thinks you should get together?" if he did not, boy, what a great story that would be! She could see the comedic arch play before her eyes with an ending scene of the poor bachelor running for his life with hundreds of potential wives going after him. First one to catch him - got him. "Isn't it a bit risky to settle down with someone just because someone else thinks that this should be the correct way to do it," she mused. "I could not do it. But I see the rationality behind this choice. I mean, that whirlwind romance of - they set eyes on each other and they just knew - does not happen in real life, does it? You have to settle for a very real person."