Heron Lake Plateau i could tell she wasn't lying, you were lying with a lion up there

no friends. a sad existence, surmised the fallen siren queen -- yet judging by the golden-doused woman's quiet manner, a not entirely undeserved sentence. she drew her narrow limbs across one another and laid her head on her paws, watching svalinn with a tired sense of amusement. it was a good thing that the young started their journey free of the pain and experienced knowledge that burdened the old: otherwise, so few would have the heart to start out at all. she hoped svalinn and raleska would find refuge here -- it might be too late for her to be part of the family, but perhaps her children would immerse and know little of the plights that beleaguered the siren queen all her life.

a sigh pressed from her slender muzzle: thoughts of her lost children and her presumed dead mate returned to her. these ugly thoughts were always present, looming threateningly on the surface of her mind, no matter how many chores she did or how often she tried to distract herself. seeing it unfit to appear vulnerable in any fashion, caiaphas quickly shoved her grim thoughts deeper, where they roiled and stirred like malcontent leviathans among a black and restless sea.

"demonte sounds familiar;" she mused, struggling to recall where she had heard it. she did not know that the name was as old as hers, if not older -- and was in many ways, inexplicably tied to the valley (and surprisingly, to her own ancestral line). "i'm an eyjolfur - a dead name here. i have never been so inland -- my entire bloodline has thrived by bodies of water." she supposed admitting a little information about herself was one way to acclimate herself to the pack -- and seem less cut off, as was often the case with the salt-wretch.

"svalinn is not related to me by blood. i raised his father, a whelp born in my cave when i was alpha of saltwinter." she tilted her muzzle to view the rambunctious toddler, ever bemused by his actions. he was not unlike lycaon; another name that caused unrest in the sylph. it had troubled her that he had not come with them, and she surmised his fate had been tied with the very bear that had forced them into exile. "how did you come to be a lone demonte among blackthorns and redhawks?"