Sunspire Mountains vice city

The agreement made Easy chuckle, even if it was not as wholehearted as it could be. It was not exactly funny that they were both relentless wanderers, incapable of settling down, but Easy had learned to laugh when she could. Inwardly, she found that she wished wolves like her would flock together; perhaps it was time to begin looking for a partner to travel with.

No, she reminded herself, it's time to dig in at the Emberwood.

"Eight!" she exclaimed, putting as much scandalized delight into the word as she could. She offered a squinty-eyed smile in the next moment. "I'm a little behind you; the Emberwood is the sixth pack I've been in. Unless you count following my brother when he tried to branch off into his own pack. That's when we got separated, and why I'm keeping an eye out, now."

Talk of curses always brought her mind back to Grayday. "My father was cursed," she shared with him. "All of his mates disappeared, until he met my mom. Then he died before she had the chance." And she was disappeared now. That was a wound that would never stop stinging; that Catori was missing and they didn't know whether she was dead or alive. Easy was inclined to think dead, just because she couldn't imagine the fierce and loyal woman being kept away for so long for any other reason. It was easier to think of that than to think about her wandering the wilds without memories of them, just like Wintersbane had been.

She'd finished her inspection of him and now gazed steadily into his face, wondering at all the worlds inside him that he'd needed to rediscover, and wondering still if there was any way to know if some were still lost to him.

"I believe in you," she decided after a moment of thought. "We can change. We do. All the time, every day. Not who we are, but how we are. Just take it one action at a time."

That was what she was trying to do. But it was hard to make choices that tied her closer to the wilds when keeping her distance and remaining free and untethered was so much simpler. She was coming to see, however, that simpler was not necessarily what came naturally to her. She was an open and loving soul, and her desire to make connections with others always seemed to shine out when given the chance.