Porcupine Ridge All that I am has been given to someone who needed it more

@Memory random, opportunistic thread @Reiko (for reference)

 

With the sun's rise came golden beams, slanting through the rose canopy overhead. Timid winds stirred as the chidrag's snow-blanketed crown peeked from within the shadows of her earthen den. 

She'd left herbs for Cordelia, food for the dark nestlings under her care.

With arrangements laid in place, and no ties to hold her back, the botanist fled her tentative home on quickened steps, bated breath. Even beyond the invisible threshold, where Memory's arrival had gone so horribly awry, she didn't quite feel safe - not until she was well beyond the stone walls of the fishbowl sanctuary. 

"Memory?" her whispers would echo raspily along the stone walls and mountain passages as the pale mother bounded north. Wispy auds high and cupped, listening, wide seelie gaze sweeping searchingly. 

"Reiko?" 

They were friends - the lady'd said so herself. And when a friend was in trouble, you helped them.

More over, the true Empress of the Vale was Awenfen's patient - it was her obligation to keep her Lady, and her unborn children, safe. 

Perhaps the others were fooled by the Izuka impersonator but the midwife knew better. There was something amiss with Reiko's twin and with her Empress missing, the halfling could only imagine the worst. 

She would search for Reiko, given that nobody else seemed to be currently, regardless of the dangers that lurked beyond the Vale. Her absence wasn't likely to be noticed: a lonely hermit of a botanist, hiding amongst the cherry trees in peaceful solitude. 

She would need the aid of a soldier, for precautionary measures. Who better than a dispersal Nightwalker, a renegade strategist of war such as Memory? 

"Mem-ory!" Awen dared to hiss a little louder as she delved deeper into the mountainside. "Reiko!"