Ankyra Sound Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place

Raleska had drifted off into absent-minded thought following her last words, glancing up and down the cliff in an abstract way. Deep in thought herself, she hardly noticed Julep besides her also had her mind racing, the cogs in her brain at full spin. It wasn't until Julep asked about the bosses that Raleska's attention was brought back to the present.

She did not think her mother would care, and having been raised under the hard print of her mother's thumb, Raleska had a good idea of what annoyed her mother, and what didn't. "Nah," Raleska drawled, drawing her gaze to the sequoias that shuddered in the distance. "I think they would only care about neighbors if they were aggressive." Raleska shrugged her thin shoulders, having heard over and over again her mother's endless tirade about Dragedan scum and how they had settled shop next to Caiaphas at the end of her reign in Saltwinter, and how she had not cared until they dared be aggressive.

How sweet it seemed to Raleska that the tide had been turned, and that Drageda had at last tasted their own bitter medicine. It didn't taste good, did it? "As long as you weren't Drageda, I guess." She shrugged again, disliking that she was thinking of Eurycrates again.