Big Salmon Lake always enjoyed and never returned

Her answer was brief, and he waited for more. She gave him nothing but a goodbye. The sudden end to their encounter startled him, but he did not seek to question what had made her turn him away, no matter how much he wished to query them of this. "It's Malachi," he offered instead when the little one - Dhole? - sought to bid him farewell, "Safe travels to you both." They may have been reluctant to offer names, but he couldn't mistrust them all. These two were nothing like Caiaphas, and he had to learn to trust himself on this. 

He turned from them, but his brows knit and he struggled not to take their abrupt dismissal personally. It seemed his words cost him again. Maybe he was better off saying nothing at all. Talking only seemed to pile odds against him - though that seemed true of everything he did these days. Upon his first arrival in the Wilds, Malachi had thought the natives were an anomaly in their clear cut borders and tense way of life, but by the day he was growing more convinced that what his family had in the Vale was the deviation from the norm. Curtness and skepticism, that was life here. The chances he would see the mother and daughter pair again were slim, and instead of brooding on his slip up, Malachi shrugged off the strange encounter and returned his focus to the lake. Perhaps he could find something of use in its depths, and Malachi slipped his way into the cool water.