Firefly Glen [PHE] pour me a drink

Tags for reference, but he's looking for Mae!

He wished the big oaf, Arric was with him. The crowd of wolves was something that had surprised him—though it shouldn’t have. It was eye-opening to see the vast number of packs that existed within a weeks travel of the creek—and perhaps a bit disconcerting.

@Cygnet was gunning for a spar—he worried she would find herself hurt or in an unwanted situation. He asked @Etienne to keep an eye out and call for him if he saw anything go awry—though the man himself also had his hands full with guardianship over Suzu’s brood that went with them.

Briskly, he moved forward, back to the camp Swiftcurrent had been placed at. They had a small stash of items in which to gift—perhaps trade, though Akavir was not entirely certain if anything on their healer’s wish list would be here. Herbs and remedies were the most useful to them—particularly when he lead a pack of wolves who found themselves involved in fights quite often.

Pulling the small skin that had been prepared to carry Arlette’s offerings, he glanced up, eyes searching for @Mae. He didn’t imagine she felt comfortable at all here—and he wasn’t even sure they would stay the entire time. But they would be going to the sea after this—if only for a week or so. The trip he had promised her.

“Maemae,” he murmured, unable to hide the grin from his face, let alone the amusement in his voice at trying Arric's pet name for the girl. "Let's go mingle."

Akavir would find his daughter hovering possessively over a varicolor pile of stones kept tucked in an old threadbare rabbit skin she'd carried all the way from Swiftcurrent Creek. None of them had kept their sheen in absence of water, but the colors were nonetheless vivid: ruddy and mauve tones, mostly, like berries. But some were a deeper blue, or brighter, or mossy-green; some were speckled or only colored in patches. Mae planned, at some point, to pass the riverworn gemstones to Akavir's care — but until then she wanted to be sure they weren't stolen or lost.

His greeting caught her off-guard. Arric's affectionate nature was as much a fact of Mae's life as the sunrise each morning and her own lost vision; a cornerstone of the meager emotional foundation of her childhood. She was used to that.

To hear it so unexpectedly from Akavir was — odd. It touched on a place so remote and fragile in her heart that it nearly hurt, and the feeling was vaguely familiar to her in the way of something half-forgotten. She swallowed, abruptly nauseated and unsure. As careful as she was to guard her expression, some of the raw, bittersweet wonder of the moment still shone through in her eyes as she turned to face her father.

It felt... nice. She wanted to cry.

Instead she blinked to brush the clinging crumbs of feeling from her expression and grinned. Mingle? Like, with people? For a moment Mae feigned shock, then fell into a more suspicious line of questioning: Or are you gonna ditch me the second some random bitch bats her eyes at you?

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If the look Mae gave him was something readable and known to him as contentment or love, it likely would have been instantly voided the moment she accused him of… ditching her for bitches?

It was hard to read the hard-worn girl—playful and grinning one moment, and then spouting out something like that the next—particularly when he wasn’t entirely sure when he had ever left her for a woman.

It was something perhaps to unpack later—certainly nothing he wanted to dwell on in this moment, when in reality, the point had been to place that smile more permanently on her face. “Yes. Mingle. With others.” He paused, nosing toward her cheek—turning to line a shoulder with hers, to help guide her, should she wish it. “There’s a lot of fuckery out there, but… it’s good to know more about it and those that are here, don’t you think?”

And that was that—dragging her out and about wouldn't last long, but it was enough to make him feel that perhaps, eventually, she could adjust to a little more hustle and bustle, should it come about.

It was also nice to simply spend some time with her, quietly, and in observation—whether from the sound of conversation, or him describing things he saw.