Blacktail Deer Plateau and i will reap the locust crop

Had it been anyone else, she would have stumbled back to all fours, but she did not budge. Head craned to lean into her mother's gentle touch.

"I thought—"

Her missing? Lost?

Perhaps everyone had thought her succumbed to a fate much like Kigipigak's. Her head swam with the thought of him alone and — very briefly — she forgot the concern that painted her mother. Pressing into her side like an eager child when Maegi's pale form was upon the ground.

Ignoring the concern in favor of praises, hazy in her exhaustion.

You are doing so much. She crooned softly. I go everywhere and still I come home to see you here. Warmth and relief in her voice. Often times she worried she would return to an empty plateau after her adventures.

I'm going to make this place something real, Ma. She paused, a smile curling her lips into the barest exposure of pale teeth. There is a man — Kigipigak, Had her mother remembered how she had called out in the woods for him? He is healing nearby but I'm going to bring him home. We will grow more.

She might have rambled on further had such already not sucked the air right out of her.