Mount Everfall She lit a fire

tag is for reference bc I made a heck ton of assumptions <3

Heck yeahhh Maia was back, and boy howdy was she ready to see @Wraen again!!

Her trip home had been a mess of ups and downs.  Initially, when she'd arrived, she almost hadn't recognized it.  The fire had annihilated the forest where she grew up, and even after months of weather, the barren landscape was like a punch to the gut.  It was indescribable, trying to reconcile the place where she'd lived those first few months with this wasteland.

She hadn't looked for their den, hadn't wanted to see it.  She couldn't imagine what Sarah must have gone through that night, but now had a slightly clearer idea, and her heart had broken for all of them.  That had been a rough few days.

But that wasn't all.

When her brother found her, Maia had been despondently circling the territory, unsure of where to go next.  Her reunion with Cori would have made the entire trip worthwhile... but it turned out, he wasn't alone.  Cass, Cori, their younger siblings... all of them had made it out and were living in the forests even further south, where the fire hadn't managed to reach.

That was where Maia had been, these last few weeks.  She'd stayed to help them as long as she could, but with winter coming, she knew she needed to get home.  Everyone here needed to know what had happened to the rest of the family.

She'd told her siblings how to find them before she left, and even leaving Cass behind had been hard.  But as she came closer and closer to Teekon, she grew more and more excited to see everyone.  

It was nearing nightfall as she came down the mountain on the southern end, and she paused briefly, staring over at the setting sun.  Man oh man, it was crazy how she'd talked about going back home... and now she thought of this as home.  Maybe it helped that she'd seen, first hand, that nothing was left of the old one.  But it was more than that, too.  She'd really really missed everyone here.