
Tali had come to tell her that Brocade had asked after her – curious in only the way that an Uncle can be. She did her best to avoid the Barracks for fear of being forced to explain herself to him. The Solstice ritual had ended in terror, for little Eden had burned his hands while Coax had sacrificed a living animal to the flames for reasons that Symre still struggled to understand. The dark girl had been prepared to welcome summer whole heartedly, to pull the remaining cold from the world and to propel it back out toward the sea.
Instead her ritual had been forever changed by burnt skin and blood, and she wasn’t sure if this was what the coven of Salsola was.
After discovering the clan of Coyotes to the west she had spent time wondering what it was about them that intrigued her so – they all had accents that bounced off one another like a cacophony of stones, their flashing eyes in gold and cerulean so different from the sharp glances that Salsola held so dear. The Rask travelled more now, borrowing horses from Margerrd that were easy enough to ride as she was no expert at it. She looked for the ones with soft expressions and greying muzzles, gentle beasts who would eagerly follow regardless of how she sat upon them.
The afternoon had brought her to the Miramichi Valley, and it sprawled all about her in flashes of wild flowers and clutches of thickets. Birds chattered to one another from the trees and Symre felt herself warming beneath the sunlight that trickled out from beneath a smudge of pristinely white clouds. With a grunt she dropped from her horses back and began to inspect the bushes that lay nestled together, her expression focused as she searched for nests to pilfer from.
”You’re too slow.” Tali was curled upon the horses haunch, her expression lazy beneath the sun, ”You’ll never catch anything like that.”