Redhawk Caldera For the excitement to arrive

Oh god she could not laugh.  She had to fight the urge considerably when Alyx referenced them liking her before she left.  Maybe Towhee had, sure, and Phox.  But as much as she joked about being the favorite, she was pretty sure she'd forfeited that when she failed to do... well, pretty much anything anyone asked her to do.  Ever.

For you and me.  I like to travel.  She answered, still low, but with a little more inflection than before.  Much like Alyx's hunting, it was an interest no one ever really seemed to acknowledge.  And of course it wasn't something anyone had ever asked her to do as a favor, which made this little deal even better.  She didn't know how far Alyx was talking, but she didn't worry about making it back.  In her time out she'd gotten better and better about seeing her surroundings without her eyes.  Dangers were still dangerous, but travel was no longer a novel experience.

When I told dad I was leaving, he tried to stop me.  I didn't let him.  He was real mad.  So was Bronco.  They didn't get it.  They'd both seemed to hate her, but she'd never actually suspected they did.  And if they had, she'd been too mad at them to care.  I wanted to go more than I cared.  Takes more than that for hate anyway.  

She shut her mouth then and listened.  Whether Alyx took her advice or not was irrelevant, but she'd thrown her lot in the instant she'd offered to go with and she knew it.  It annoyed her to know that her younger sister wanted to leave and was denied when Meerkat and Bronco had that chance, and she felt they had the right to make their own mistakes.  If Alyx offered her support as a reason, and Niamh took it out on her, she didn't really care.  At least Alyx would have someone in her corner when shit went down.