Blacktail Deer Plateau cicadas

Family by association. It stung like teeth across her muzzle, and in any other moment, she may have rejoined him, bristling, with fiery words. But the fight had gone out of Maegi, and she bore the (perceived) insult with further sagging shoulders.

After all—none of it would matter soon enough.

She turned her mismatched gaze to Mou, wondering what he would have to say. . .if anything. He'd been quiet and withdrawn, too, since her suggestion the other day. She wondered if his heart was truly in it. She did not want to take a life that wasn't willing to go, least of all his. But she couldn't well abandon him, either.

Say we should go, Maegi silently pleaded, eyes boring into his skull. Say we should go to the Redhawks, and drag the children along by force if we have to.