Heron Lake Plateau j'ai toujours vécu ici pourtan

Oh, so it was a little early in the season. That would have explained why all she saw were nothing more than tender shoots poking through leaf litter and other detritus. Though the leaves were beginning to unfurl and grow and the flowers slowly rising to bloom, not every herb or healing agent she was aware of came into existence. Chances were that they had gone over this, but she was ever keen to make her parents proud and stuck to her guns nevertheless. Better to find their locations now than later, or before someone else came along to steal her glory.

These were things that she thought about without realizing it, ever in contention with her siblings and the multitude of skills they possessed. She had those traits too, somewhere deep down within. But the drive to do as they did was not entirely there, even if she enjoyed a good tumble or a bout of trouble to participate in. A giggle escaped her as Raven tried to fully join her along the muddied water edge—it was rarely not funny when the mud trapped someone else. Less so, if it had been her.

"I was thinking," she stated simply. "Eljay used to bring us here once in a while to watch the herons." It was then that her expression faltered a bit and she was far too young to mask the trouble that came in its wake, back to her original thought.

"Mama," she carried on, "why did Eljay have to go with the others? I thought he liked it here. He says he does, he comes to visit us, but," and her voice trailed off, not at all comprehending the why someone moved on, the thought of dispersing as she or her siblings may someday consider or do. He wasn't the only one who had gone either, she remembered, for Niamh had as well. Key components of their foundation, of family, and she remembered that the list went on.