Blacktail Deer Plateau Maybe I'm homesick for it all

Rosalyn cleared things up neatly, putting to rest many of Nieve's anxieties in a single sentence. They thought the children were rude. They thought of her as a child. It made her feel simultaneously irritated and sick to her stomach. Irritated because she'd stopped being a child the day the sea smashed their beloved home and sent them fleeing from it, the day her siblings went missing again, and every day since then. Sick to her stomach because she felt peculiarly like she had no right to be upset that Ying and her sisters thought of her this way.

Regardless, to know that Ying and her family were simply stuck in their ways lifted a huge weight off Nieve's back. All along she'd thought she'd done something wrong by trying to put a stop to the argument that day, when she actually hadn't been wrong at all. She wasn't a child. She deserved respect. But the triplets saw only a kid when they looked at her. That makes sense, Nieve breathed and was surprised to find her voice lighter than before.

Rosalyn posed her a question then and Nieve, usually smart and thoughtful, lacked a satisfactory answer. Probably nothing, she admitted, not bothering to hide her sheepish grin. They worked for the pack even if they were more devoted to their family the whole time, and I thought maybe I did something wrong, so... I probably would've just... accepted it eventually. But now she knew she didn't have to. Not everything that older wolves did was right. Not everything that wolves did with complete confidence was right, either. Ying's challenge and behaviour had shaken Nieve's faith in herself, but not because of anything Nieve did herself. It was Ying's prejudice. It had always been Ying's prejudice.

I get it now, she said, breathing a low sigh of relief. Why you did what you did. You just seemed so... not like yourself. And maman, too. Nieve was still infinitely more bothered by what she'd seen of Erzulie that day, for Rosalyn she'd always believed to be the fiercer of the two and expected that kind of thing from. Truthfully, it was unexpected from both of them, but less so from the pirate.