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She was glad he wasn’t upset over her apparent forgetfulness. She felt bad for not remembering him and then felt even worse when he commented he wasn’t much to remember. For that reason, she wished she could have proven him wrong with a sudden, “aha!” of realization, but she did not honestly remember the fellow. However, that guilt quickly dissipated when he began to explain where he had been all this time. She quickly recognized Edinburgh as one of the many places on her human maps, a dot on a floating piece of land that had been from a seemingly completely different time. It was strange to think he had been places she had only read about. Just when Tayui thought Theodoric made her feel like a homebody, he revealed his homesickness for the region; though, Tayui wasn’t sure if it was his real home, Jaded Shadows, or Nova Scotia in general.
She nodded and added a quick, “yeah” in agreement when he mentioned the ruined packlands. Although she no longer felt a pang of sadness whenever someone mentioned Jaded Shadows, that didn’t mean the loss of the pack hurt any less. He concluded his story with his arrival at AniWaya and Tayui nodded once more, both to show she had been listening and to indicate that the situation had been somewhat similar to her own. Though, she had chosen to join AniWaya when it had only just begun, before it had a pack or real claim to any land.
She was about to relate her own experience when Theodoric asked for just that. She frowned sadly when he asked about Jaded Shadows – it had really been a beautiful pack.
“Most of us escaped after the fire, but I lost track of my co-Alpha, Fatin. I howled for my members for days and a few found their way back to me, but Jaded Shadows was nothing without Fatin. I made a new pack in its memory with a friend from Storm. I called the new pack Shadowed Sun, following the tradition. It was on Halcyon Mountain, in an attempt to recreate the old packlands. It didn’t last too long, though. Fatin formed her own pack and it eventually disbanded as well. I come across old ‘Shadows members every so often, but they come and go.” A grimace and then an attempt at a smile. Everything was going to get better, right?