Lost in more ways than one

Gloom didn't have to wait long for Makara to fill the silence again. Really, it was what she was best at. She made a soft noise of confirmation at having heard her speak, but her eyes were still trained intently on the furrows in the ground. Mak was lost in thought until her companion's hoarse voice returned her own question, and she peered up back at her through the fogged lenses of her glasses. "Well, no, I can't say that I have. An unfortunate by-product of being a lover of ancient objects is that you become sort of a... vagabond. There isn't any place I've stayed that has satisfied my curiosity enough to stay once I've rifled through all I've wanted... but it seems these strange happenings have called me back to these lands." Her tail swished decisively and Makara bent down again, studying the ground for a time. The silence chafed at her, and she felt her skin crawl.

"I was a pack wolf once, belonging to the Armada," she mused. Flashes of her father's disappointment and her mother's growing disinterest as they aged flashed in her head, aching like a phantom limb she'd lost in some long ago war. Hm. She hadn't thought about any of that in quite some time. But there was some small light, wasn't there? Races with Levi. Moving north for the first time and realizing her allergies weren't quite so bad in the frigid air, although the ground was too hard to excavate most of the year.  "But I was always more interested in what might be lying beyond pack borders, like this - these furrows in the ground almost look naturally formed, the kinds of tracks I'd see from some sort of tunneling animal beneath the ground, but never quite like this. Almost looks snakelike, and I don't know of any subterranean snakes, although I suppose that doesn't mean they don't exist..." Man, it felt good to have a captive audience.

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