Hushed Willows [festival] so twice five miles of fertile ground

Isleña was a woman made for parties, though many of the wolves she met might be loathe to agree with that. As a Luk, she was social by nature — her power and strength came mostly from their numbers and finely-tuned sense of oneness. Without numbers behind her, Isleña lost most of her strength, but she did not lose her appreciation for parties, even if this place was full of strangers and she barely spoke their tongue. 

The chocolate-dipped banshee could not have been more in the thick of it, balancing many other’s attentions and relishing the limelight, when a voice struck her. It might have been the last voice she had ever expected to hear, having wished to hear it for so long and only experiencing disappointment as a result. Isleña had put the want of it so far from her consciousness that, at first, it did not even register with her and she went on being a spectacle in her own little show — but then she glanced over her shoulder, and saw the form of a wolf who proudly sported her same genes, and knew the day had finally come!

Isleña whirled on her heels, greeting Tashkent with a stupefied look and inability to express a single thought. She couldn’t move either; her feet had become permanently cemented to the ground, fearful of moving and waking herself up from this dream of dreams. She twitched her tail, and when she did not wake into some other reality, she began to beat her tail wildly from left to right. Her heart began to thud in her chest, and she surged forward, face brightening and expressing pure happiness rather than disbelief. 

“Kanım qan! Mən sənə inanmıram! Harada oldun? Başqaları var?”

So many emotions whirled around her head that Isleña did not know which one to give herself over to. She was overwhelmed, then joyful, but almost too quickly she found herself slipping into anger. Where had she been? What was the explanation she could possibly have? Isleña had wondered this for so long and had played out so many different scenarios in her head that she figured they could all only be dead. Death was the only thing that could separate a Luk from the hoarde, wasn’t it? Tashkent was here, not dead —though alone, it seemed — and Isleña wanted answers. Abandonment wasn’t a part of their code. 

“Qəribə torpaqlarda məni tək buraxdınız, mən də yaşamağa məcbur oldum.” she stated curtly, eyebrows furrowed, not knowing what to make of this.