Lone Star Mountain but i -- i want it all -- oh, i want it all

Saena didn't know what she'd expected, but Indra's affection wasn't it. She nearly flinched away, but upon realizing Indra was seeking her touch rather than preparing to harm her, she pressed as near as her daughter would allow. She swept her tongue across the top of Indra's head as she struggled to come to terms with a number of things: that Indra wasn't in fact dead, that she was now nowhere near Larksong Grotto, and that her sibling was nowhere to be found.

After a heart-wrenching lurch, Indra gave voice to several of these, and Saena pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she tried to come up with the best explanation. "I was down in the plains and saw you hunched over a puddle. You seemed really sick, so I pulled you up to the mountains with me so I could look after you." That was the long and short of it. That she'd thought her child was dead and intended to bring her into Duskvale anyway didn't really matter. Was it revenge on Reek? Probably. He would've never known what happened to her if he couldn't find her body, and the guilt might have eaten him alive.

But Indra was decidedly not dead, so now Saena was left to figure out what to do next whilst hoping it wasn't returning the girl to Larksong Grotto. "Was Laurel supposed to be with you?" she wondered, hesitating to feel bad that her brattier child was not accompanying them. Saena wanted nothing more than to retrieve both of her daughters, but she would be lying if she said she was overly keen on seeing Laurel again after what the tan wolf had said. Indra's concern broke her heart, though. "I didn't see her at all. I'm sorry, she isn't here."