Hideaway Strath how strange to seek such strangeness

As fate would have it, he finds her first -- his heavy footfalls (out of character for the surprisingly agile man of ursine proportions) alerting her to his presence. Her butterfly ears perk, pale crown swiveling in the Grandmaster's direction vigilantly, gibeon gaze brightening significantly as it drinks him in. The blanchard's bottlebrush tail begins to sweep a cheerful arc through the air where it remains low by her hocks, reaching up with a tiny hop to brush her head against him as Kynareth reaches down to accommodate her much shorter height -- allowing herself to touch her rosy nose to the underside of his chin for the briefest of moments in affection. 

A wave of heat washes over her etiolated countenance, not unlike the sea lapping at the shores. It feels a bit odd to hear him address her with such a title, lowborn as she is -- even now a mere Acolyte, though this is not to say that she is rankled to be such. It is a familiar place to her, notions such as authority and power foreign to the once-slave. "I am vell," she answered truthfully. 

She was happy here. The healer had settled in well and seemed to be thriving -- even if the angry wounds littering her nape and the hitch in her steps spoke otherwise. The injuries inflicted by Whrist would heal and though the dark femme had not said as much, Aerin thought she seemed remorseful -- or maybe that was just her unshakeable optimism. 

"I 'ave begun to train vith Nyra an' Vein -- in combat an' ze 'ealing arts respectively -- an' I feel I am making zis place my 'ome," she admitted, smiling at him warmly. "I vould like to think zat I can call both of them a friend." Heat colored her cheeks again, for she couldn't be sure that her relationship with Vein would not prove to be more than just friendliness. 

"'ow are ye?" she asked him then, reaching over to bump her pink nose against his shoulder playfully after a moment. "I 'ear ye may be a father again." There was a sort of unspoken invitation in her words -- a reluctance to pry but a simultaneous offer to share if he was looking for someone to talk to about it. "Congratulations," she murmured genuinely, her tail wagging at the thought of little bitty Donovans running around.