Heron Lake Plateau Shadows alive.

Cameo! Feel free to skip as Phox is only observing from afar.

He had not planned to run into Towhee intentionally, but Phox found himself following her scent without any real thought put into it. The silvery yearling heard voices up ahead, and he caught this much coming out of his sister’s mouth: “step up as a leader again.” He was still far away, and while they probably could have spotted him, they looked very involved in whatever they were talking about. The rest of his sister’s speech (funny, coming from a deaf girl) he only heard bits and pieces, and he couldn’t really put it all together from where he was.

What he could read was Niamh’s body language and tone, which were quite inviting and chipper to the notion. It wasn’t quite clear what Quixote thought about it, but Phox figured his answer would be loud and clear soon enough. As for the Theta, he hung back, allowing the scene to play out while he watched from afar, out of the way and (mostly) out of their discussion.