Stavanger Bay look in your glass, and there appears a face

giggle breaks out over the waves, the girl stepping lightly through the shallows. oh, relief—it is sharp and complimented next by hope. the sea is familiar, in both its danger and beauty. it has dragged her away, but now, she thinks, it could lead her home. home is the stuff of desperate longing turned fevered dreams, but now it is attainable, perhaps, and the girl smiles unabashedly for the first time in a long while. 

there's uncertainty, too - she does not know what direction to turn. north; or south? the prospect of picking wrong after coming all this way is daunting, unthinkable. and so she waits, turning the idea over in her head, trying to choose the way that feels right. she will make it. she has to. she has already come to far, and she will go however much further she needs to to return back home.

tags for reference

Before parting with them, she had portended to her @Dragomir and Isilmë of treasures tucked away in sands, an impish curl pecking at scarred lips. She promised them fortune to be found amongst the dunes and — glinting half-sight upon her daughter — objects of the heavens, come down by tempest. Airgetlám still toted the smile with her, crescented beneath shorn features, and knew with unwavering and pronounced confidence that what she sought would be here, in this place that was a treasure of its own.

And here was this realm! How she once knew it and now wished to marvel, if ever she should ghost to its shores once more. First, though—

Aegelius struts alongside, and as she minds her step of his feathers so too does the chestnut mourner mind what lurks beneath the late summer sands with a coo here, there, and thither again. But the silver only returns his fretting with chirrups of her own; thin tail feathering over bony hips, pink nose pressed and seeking through Stavanger sands.

The peal of laughter is what gives cause for the marred crown to raise; and her greycloaked half-sight alights upon a whelp, flourishing as much as the rose that bled through her pelt. Not quite shy of her own daughter’s age and, yet ... did her family wander, as well?

Aurëwen didn’t allow herself to consider the alternative, and sent up a gentle  “Far and away, eälótë?”  made inquisitive upon the breezes.

her laughter is swept away in the breeze of the waves, and the girl turns to see a stranger. among the waves, the sea, there is no place to hide, and so she only stills, waves buffeting against her limbs almost playfully, as if a few weeks ago they hadn't dragged her from her home. 

for a long moment after Aure's words fade away, the girl is silent, staring. and then, almost in the manner of a creature extending a nervous limb outside a hidey-hole, she echoes back, "far." when the simple word fails to produce any kind of outburst that would send the girl running down the strand, she makes her careful way to the shore, pausing where the water laps the sand. "who're you?"

bleh phone post

The girl’s chime of far soon reaches winter-thin ears — Far from home, perhaps? It is not her place to enquire ... at least, not when the druid and seachild have just met. But then a lilt is sent from the roseling, who wades to shore with her own wondering as to the silver’s name; who only proffers an answer when the she had been approached more nearer to.  “I am Aurëwen,”  she wisped, taking her time to settle upon a bony bum. Her mourner, curiously peering from about her crude hip; presenting him to the seachild with,  “and this is my dæmon, Aegelius,”  whoso then introduced himself with a muted coo.

With a rare glint of pearl from between her shorn lips, the herbalist gave, also, a tentative alternative — “Aurë, and my ... Egg, if you would prefer.”  A lull, filled by the sonority of sun’s press upon sea, before,  “He is keen to unearth shells from ze land. As for myself ... well,”  dimpling, vulpine, eyes crescenting to half-moons,  “I shan’t ever tell. ... Pray, would you like to accompany us? There is more within ze dunes than beneath ze tides, as far as I have heard tell.”

the name she gives is strange, but stranger still is the dove atop her back. "he's pretty," she offers, and then, "I like him." her flowery, flowing speech takes her a moment to interpret, having spoken to very few wolves the past fortnight. but she offers the girl a chance at companionship, a simple task, and a way to gauge the woman's trustworthiness. 

she thinks on it a moment, then offers an "ok." her muzzle cants slightly to the left, as if to ask, what now? she's quite an accomplished shell-finder, and yet she hasn't had the chance to it what seems like eons. but, tentatively, she'll follow Aure's lead.