Blacktail Deer Plateau always been that way

Malachi read nothing into her greeting and moved to return her gesture, but before he could, Eilidh had stepped away. The haste in her movement surprised him and he pulled back with a frown. The Mayfair had replaced her initial approach with one of more reserve, and Malachi eyed her with a pause of apprehension.

He lowered himself with slow caution and tried to ease back into a natural approach, whatever that meant for him. "Well, I'm... well, I suppose." A nervous smile twitched his lips and challenged his best effort to conceal his lack of practice in the social arts. He'd had an easy enough time with Pearl, but there was something about youth that made him uncertain, and twofold with Eilidh. "Well, I've been watching the mountain border, you know, the one that touches the burnt forest." His words began slow, but talking about his work was easy for him, and soon he found his words came more like they used to. "The ground looks to be holding up well, but it'll still be a while before it'll be safe to push the borders back to where they were before. The forest will need to regrow first, and most of that will happen once winter is over."

Because forestry must have been what Eilidh had meant when she asked him if he had done anything exciting with his life, but he thought little of it. "I trust you've been keeping yourself busy?" He noticed her growth with more clarity now that he could compare her height against his own. He'd noticed, even without her extra effort to make herself taller.