Meadowlark Prairie to hold a flame to a gas filled lake

"They do not expect your return, nephew."

Vaati turned to cast his eyes upon the estranged man, unable to feel the sense of familiarity he knows he should with the other. The sentence alone was likely the most words his uncle had ever spoken to him in his life, he briefly considered, and instantly felt that his distant expression was justified. "And they should not." He snapped coldly, vividly recalling the events that caused him to hold such a disdain for the woods he once called home. Utterances of broken promises and owed remorse meant nothing to the man. Not now, not when Vaati had long grown out of expecting apologies from anyone that had wronged him. While it would have been easy to blame his uncle for allowing his mother to fall from grace, Vaati knew quite clearly that Potema had dug her own grave and had laid quite contently in it. In the end, Vaati had found his own way in the world, without the guidance of anyone. It had destroyed him, forced him to grow up faster than he deserved, and ultimately wrecked what chance he had to become more than the Woods demanded... but nevertheless, it had made him stronger. 

"Is she alive?" The question broke minute of the silence that had settled between them, for the answer was perhaps the only thing he considered to be of some value to him that was tied to Blackfeather Woods. His mother, regardless of her abandonment, was still his mother. If she was indeed dead, it would not come as a shock to him. The last he had seen of her was a ghost-like figure, teetering on the edge of reality. She had been wasting away, and Vaati had done little to stop her. She hadn't wanted to be stopped. But what became of her was something he had to know, for his own sake rather than hers.