Blacktail Deer Plateau all the things yet to come are the things that have passed

and so she is alone again. she wonders, sometimes, if it is her fate to be lost and wandering. it seems all too quickly she becomes unmoored, and with age does not come the clarity she had so hoped for. but she knew courtfall, for all its beauty and kindness, could never be her home, and so she'd bid aurewen goodbye with the knowledge that she could not shepard her back towards her family as she had in the past. 

perhaps it is some grown-up surety, or only luck, but a day comes and goes and she finds herself at the base of the familiar plateau. was she really this close, all this while? clem hastens to pulls herself up the rock; she's chosen a poor place to ascend, and the lingering remnants of her illness coupled with the effects of the famine leave her breathless not halfway up. it hardly dissuades her, and a few harried moments later she reaches the plateau. breathless howl for @Erzulie leaves her muzzle, but her momentum does not stop,instead bringing her deeper into the territory as she searches for any trace of her mother, her siblings.

the herds must soon return, before the season. and she must sequester herself elsewhere. perhaps she would take nieve, maybe rosalyn. they would ward away the lusts of men, and pass into summer unscathed.
an aimless patrol, one of many, brought to her a tendril of scent she did not think she would have held again, followed by a girlish howl.  
long strides carried the harlot to the plateau's edge, where she beheld her prodigal daughter, claws caked with mud from the climb, carved sinewy and lighter by the famine. "clementine!" erzulie gasped, hurrying forward.
sweet child, have you come back to stay?

When a howl slipped by on the wind, he stood in attention, curious. The voice did not call for him, the song sung to a different melody—Erzulie, it seemed, was the one with whom an audience was sought after. Curiosity further piqued by the vague familiarity of the varying tones, coupled with the summoning of the woman, he could not refrain from meeting this guest, too.

Lengthy strides and bounds across the plateau kept him moving effortlessly, seeking out Erzulie, at the very least. But when he arrived he spied two figures, one he recognised immediately whereas the other momentarily slipped his mind; initially, all he saw was an unknown figure, her place within their lands unwelcome. But gradually, as he drew even closer yet, he found familiarity in her expression—one of their own, a lost piece reappeared from thin air.

Aningan slowed to a gallop and then a steady trot, eyes trained on the two but body relaxed and expression friendly; he could not recall her name at that moment, having spent little time with her before, but he knew enough to realise the older woman’s fondness for the girl. The boy was quiet and kept his distance, for now, not wanting to greet the girl before Erzulie did.

"mama!" she moves to close the distance between them as quickly as she can, pressing tightly against her mother's chest and planting frantic kisses along her muzzle. "I'm so sorry, so, so sorry." it is all she can offer, just then, terrible guilt at her absence all-consuming, sharper than even her relief at being back here. 

she withdraws, slightly, worried now. "I shouldn't have gone so far." it is what caused the departure of Rosalyn in the first place, and she's gone and vanished a second time. she is a child, stupid and petulant, and as her gaze turns briefly to Anigan she considers the possibility that she might no longer be welcome. it is fleeting, unlikely, but her certainty at coming home is just as quickly extinguished.

aningan had always accepted her wayward children, and erzulie was beginning to grow a finally grateful bone in her spine about it. thus, as she brushed clementine's cheeks, forehead, with reassuring kisses, her two-toned gaze was affectionate when it alighted upon their young leader.
"rusalka will always be your home," the harlot declared, glancing into clementine's face with a pang to see how the months were beginning to shape the girl toward womanhood. "we should tell aningan dat you are heah to stay."

The boy felt awkward, out of place, watching the two reunite; the feeling the crept into his chest wasn’t nearly as strong as when he witnessed Rosalyn’s return but it was there all the same. But those feelings soon morphed into a look of surprise when Erzulie’s gaze found his own—affectionate, startling him. But he took it as an invitation and approached the pair, slowly but surely. He paused only when he heard the older woman speak, ears perking and eyes finding their way to the girl.

“You’ll always be allowed to stay here,” he assured her—both of them, even, perhaps. “Your family’s here.” Aningan refused to be someone that separated a family; he understood that pain and wished it upon no one.