Swiftcurrent Creek I wanna hold you close

All welcome but @Aethon I'm looking at yooooou~

On a blustery mid-afternoon, a pale woman found herself sitting atop an eminence on the creek's eastern side. Several feet below the ridge, the water of the deceitful creek swirled around a bend, its surface dimpled. She engaged memories of home and discovered a distinct homesickness for the sea... Which explained why she had come here. The sound of rushing water sucked around a river's corner was comforting, reminiscent of the crash of ocean waves. More than once, she had considered slinking back to Horizon Ridge, admitting she was wrong, if only to see the sea again... But the feeling that she was right kept her rooted here. The strength and approval of her Gods kept her here. Lecter kept her here.

Of course, her princeling kept her here, as well. No doubt the boy grew tired of displacement, and she was loathe to uproot him again. He still displayed a distrust of any meat she placed before him. Jinx supposed she approved of this behaviour, and had even taken to shooting him cheeky smiles when he refused to eat around her. Ira could not have been starving himself, she knew. The Kesuk didn't expect him to ever trust her, just as she didn't expect to ever love him... Though she had developed a fondness for his cheekiness and his attitude. One day, she would elevate him from princeling status to king, be it by her own rule or by helping him win the title himself.

She would be the silent puppetmaster in the back, pulling strings and whispering advice in his ears. For now, he was but a child still... And showing great promise. But Jinx didn't think of Aethon today; she thought of Kiviuq, no doubt still hard at work under Kaskae in Shearwater Bay. He had been her favourite of all her relatives. Aside from her littermates and Kerberos, who was brother to her no less than Arktos and Vex were, Jinx missed him most of all. They had been close as children, similarly bullied by Kaskae in their youth and later bonding against Bold Heart... While she had Lethe, Lecter, and Clarice here, Jinx could not help wondering how Kiviuq was holding up. His siblings, Silatuyok and Nukilik, weren't been as close with her, even as they got older. She would even go so far as to say Silatuyok disliked her outright. Arktos was on a mission from the Gods, Vex has long since disappeared, Kaskae and she had never seen eye-to-eye... So Kiviuq had been her closest friend at home, and she could only hope he was still well.

"Anaanak," she implored in her mother's tongue, her eyes scraping the sky for some sign that Nauja, her deceased grandmother, heard her plea. "Watch over them, and let not the flames ever take them. Please... For me."