The Phoenix Valley gimpster had spent far too much time in his own head as of late, pondering what was and what shouldn't have been after the unfortunate consistency of recent events. Too much was on his mind, inevitably; it was times like these that he was made strangely nostalgic for unrecognizable things, but the Patriarch oddly found himself missing Iskata's presence and clairvoyance over himself. He missed lounging around and managing to escape everyday life by hiding his starved, malnourished body in the hay of the barn animals and dozing the hours away until the once Matriarch would come across him and send him away. Jefferson missed the lack of responsibility, the ease of day and night when he had once been a loner. He could not turn back now, though--he had too much to live for in Phoenix Valley and too many depending on him. His own kids were hunting him down, his subleader was getting into trouble, the neighboring clan was brooding against his, Addison was growing too fast, and something about Geneva still perplexed him beyond reason... to the point that he couldn't bear to stop trying to figure out what it was.
Something called him away from the packlands in the end. Perhaps it was the need to get away--it had been months since he'd been stirred away from home after all the business and problems the pack had been having. There were a few faces he wished to see; recent nostalgia had reminded the hybrid of many months past, when he had stumbled across Cercelee for the first time. She had given him comfort, somehow; resembling his grandmother was one thing, but she was a kind soul. Haku was somewhere in those lands as well, doing whatever it was he did, as Jefferson was hardly aware of the many horrible things that his younger half-sibling had done in the past.
Jefferson might have called their unexpected rendezvous an excuse for pack negotiations or something similar, but the truth was, the cyclops needed someone--anyone--who was of neutral party with whom he could simply be himself, though even that wasn't reliable. He'd been a shaking, horrible wreck for days: a slower pace, a wide-eyed, distant gaze, a distracted mind.
And he walked along the Dahlia borders as such, hardly even knowing he was there.