Moonspear allay; align

Alya smiled, too, to hear that he'd been nervous about getting to know her parents. They could be rather intense, and her mother was nothing like the sweet, maternal Valette -- although, Alya suspected the two might have respected each other, had they the occasion to get to know one another. But it wasn't to be, and perhaps Alya could count it as having been for the best. Just... not today.

"Me too," she replied, glancing up toward the high peaks, where her mother had often retreated during her season or other times of deep thought. "You know, I was already six months old by the time I left this mountain," she told him, smiling at the memory of running Sassafrass off their land. "Everything was so flat and open, it made me dizzy. And the air feels thicker in the valleys. I don't know what it is. I guess my sisters and I just take after my mother's line. Her mother and her mother before her both had their own mountains."

Alya looked off toward Sawtooth Spire and remembered seeing it for the first time, and imagining she might claim it with the help of her sisters and Vaati. She still thought of the male with a gentle pang of uncertainty; was he still alive? Did he ever think of her? But the feeling soon faded, as did thoughts of the other male.

Easthollow laid just beyond that distant spire, and she knew that Nikai was eager to return. "My sisters need me right now," she said softly, looking back at her mate. "I know we said that we'd go home to Easthollow after a week or two, but..." Her throat suddenly felt tight and painful. She swallowed, trying to loosen it. "I don't know what to do. Being back here is so painful, knowing that they're gone -- but Hydra's about to have her first litter and Yama is like a ghost, and I don't trust that Dirge character now any more than I did when we first met. Oh, what was she thinking?"

And then she was crying, harder than she'd allowed herself in years.