Dragoncrest Cliffs By fire and sword, we'll take back our world.

With him, she was perhaps among her most comfortable. Even with all that weighed on her, and thus why her greeting was so subdued. I know, she sighed, though frowned openly, although she couldn't say she felt it was the wrong choice. Here, at the cliffs, tragedy after tragedy had come to them and she was starting to worry what would be next--what else could she lose? No wonder Aure did not want her babies to greet a fate such as that one, after what had happened to Verx especially. All of it left a hurt she could not even fathom in full.

She didn't like it, though, and knew what it meant, so it did not need said. Even if they splintered off, and for perhaps the first time, she almost understood. This was not like when Sequoia, Wildfire, and Kiwi left them, and even different from Dalia. The gona was learning how it all could be so different, now the tiniest shift in things caused everything to turn out some new and wild way...

And dad was talking about some of the other branches, she said, quieter than before as she reined in her feelings on it all. She had only managed to make him to tell her a little about them, but all of what he knew was through others, he said, so maybe there was not as much as she hoped. He had never gone, even if he had not been born on the lands of the cliffs like she and Dacio had been. Leaving, if not now, anytime, was not easy to imagine for her so suddenly. About the new heda, too.. she mentioned through a tired sigh after the terrible cascade of bad news this winter had been--and now spring was hardly looking any better. This wasn't what she wanted, even as her skin grew calloused from coping, constantly, with whatever new strife came their way.