Dragoncrest Cliffs i'm not crying. you're not crying, are you?

He didn’t back down despite her agreeable airs, nor did he totally understand the meaning of her choppily put-together explanation. Isleña grit her teeth together as his tone turned even more bitter, taking offense to her jests — men were simply the worst when guarding their own soil, weren’t they? Isleña, from a nomadic family, did not truly see the value in creating domicile in just one place, and thought his temperamental displays to look hot headed and overdramatic. Not that she wasn’t used to all things hot-headed and overdramatic, it was the Luk’s specialty after all, but she wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of it.

The banshee’s demeanor melted considerably and fell back, feeling the anxiety bite at the back of her throat just as it had when her place amongst the tangle had been discovered. Cockiness was getting her no where, and a wolf with no allies was as good as dead. The woman’s confident gaze dropped to her pointed paws and she held it there for a moment, silent, thinking about what she could possibly say next to 1) placate him, 2) explain who invited her here, 3) entice him or 4) all of the above. In the end, Isleña decided to go with authenticity — her story was sad enough on its own, after all, and did not need any frills to inspire compassion.

Isleña and her sea gaze glanced back up at him, beseechingly, simply asking for understanding. “…is…” she began slowly, tasting the word on her tongue as she had once tasted the man before her. “hard. For talking...” What was? Both speaking the common tongue, as well as a life without her family. He knew how much they meant to her; how offended she had become when he had suggested that she might be alone. “All Khorasan… gone.” Then, a sincere moment of silence fell over them as the weight of those words crushed her.

Isleña hauled in a breath, unable to fake the amount that this sucked. It was impossible to summarize what had happened, but Isleña continued to push the limits of her nascent vocabulary and avoided lapsing into her family’s tongue, no matter how comforting the sounds might be to her own ears. “Today Dradego,” the cinder fae finished with a grimace, because she knew she was pronouncing that word wrong and she didn’t want to seem ungrateful. “Think — thank you Mall-ee and Ore,” she finished finally and closed her eyes. That had been exhausting.