Ankyra Sound lost at sea

The wolf that approached her was not the wolf she had said goodbye to. Though their difference in height was not so great thanks to the stature she inherited from her relatives, it was still something she noticed immediately; more than that, he was thicker, more solid, less lanky. For her own part, she was as good as full grown—though she had much filling out to do. Being away did her no favors. Being home did him plenty. He looked so much like his mother, and yet nothing at all that there was no confusing them now—and his voice, deeper, darker, richer. But what had not changed in her absence was his eyes, and the way they regarded her, or his scent, something that would always be the cocktail that made him. A mixture of salt, sea, wind, and pine—for all of her love for the snow and its pristine, clean scent, she did not realize how much she had missed his.

In the beginning of chaos, it had been him and Caiaphas who kept her grounded. They were the promise that new beginnings were not all bad (there had been fighting and chaos, but companionship and truth and more); she had simply not been ready to start without those she had known all of her life. It was a frightening thing. And Illidan seemed to understand it, and did not hold her departure against her. There was understanding there. That he did not hold her back fueled her desire to return all the more.

Though she did not know the real hurt of her failure until his question. It was fine to not speak of it, to have lived through it; but by speaking it, it somehow made it real. She shook her head and lowered her head to the earth, and for a moment her shoulders seemed to sag. There was a whiff of something so terribly familiar here that her ears, once flattened atop her crown, came upright... but she did not dare let herself think it. Nor did she let herself feel this way for long at all. What would it do for her? And her family would not like to see her mope. So she rose, and with a small smirk, she admitted: well, some. I found you and home again, her tail waved behind her. Illidan and his mother had made this place more than just a means of survival, whether they liked it or not.