Manea glanced up as Temno and Ciemny flew off from their perches among the stone ruins, scouting ahead for her as she began to make a plan for their path through Boreas. Her plans for the band she formed had been significantly derailed and postponed by the illness that struck her husband and daughter, but now that their symptoms had dissipated and they were on the mend she began to put her plans into action. Her first orders of business would be to go visit with Armada, Ashen, and Fenmyre to make sure the fledgling relationships she had begun to form with those packs still stood while she figured out their next steps. She was also quite interested to see this pack of sins that Chimera had described so she was glad that it would be their last stop in the trip so they could spend a bit of time there.

She smirked slightly and started moving through the Stone Steppe, beginning to make her way back toward the island, when a distantly familiar scent caught her attention and made her freeze in her tracks. No matter how long it had been she would never forget her traitorous mother's scent, but this wasn't quite right to be hers, but someone closely related to her perhaps. Her expression shifted into a frown and she turned her aqua gaze toward where the scent led, her ear flicking as she considered her options. It definitely wasn't the scent of her long lost brother and if it wasn't her mother... there was really only option it could be. Part of her wanted to turn the other way and pretend she had never noticed, but another part of her wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Manea turned her path to follow the trail she crossed, following it to the edge of the Stone Steppe and very nearly into the thicker grasses that surrounded the Firefly Lake before her aqua gaze finally landed on the swirls of violet and purple. She had only laid her eyes on her half sibling twice—once shortly after her birth and again right before their mother was stripped of her name and sent away with the pup and the brute that fathered her—but her patterns and markings were easy enough to recognize and combined with the similar undertones to their scents it was undeniable. "You," she growled as she approached Desponia with narrowed aqua eyes.

Manea | Temno | Ciemny

Luckily for Desponia it seemed she had missed the worst of whatever had plagued the lands of Boreas and Auster, though a few small outcropping of glowing rocks and fungi grew in some of the darker areas she roamed the woman had no inkling of the real horror she'd dodged. The sky-marked woman moved slowly and did her best to dodge around the pack scents that the wind carried to her, she didn't have a destination in mind but as long as she steered clear of others she was mostly happy. And all of that was about to come crashing down, in the worst way possible. Not only was she about to butt up against another wolf, they were ones who knew her, at least a little. Estranged from her family as she was, Desponia knew they knew she existed and likely hated her for it.

The growl hit Desponia's ears and her head shot up immediately, bright pinks narrowing instantly and though her ears flicked back for a brief second she lifted a defiant gaze up at her half-sister. She squared her stance and jutted her chin out slightly, a clear challenge to the approaching woman, she was not backing down. "You." She responded flatly, though she barely had any memories of her older half-sister, having only seen her once in her life, the scent was familiar and there could be no mistaking the similarities.

"Speech"

Image by Fiery-vulpes

Manea scoffed at the defiance that her half-sister gave, looking up at her with a pink gaze. Seeing this bastard child with such a coat so true to their lineage and horns that curled around her skull irritated her more than it should. Perhaps her distaste and distrust of this nearly stranger would have been more justified if her traitorous mother's failure and sin had been more obvious in her offspring, but Desponia looked to be as much of her sibling as any of them. A snarl twitched at her lips as she gave a small shake of her head. "I shouldn't even bother. The daughter of an exiled woman that broke every law our family holds dear... the family she dared to call herself the matriarch of." Part of her wanted to just turn and walk away and try to forget that they ever crossed paths, but another part of her wouldn't let her. If she walked away and let this woman go there would be squandered Mendacium blood out in the world, untrained and untested, lost to the waves of fate.

There was a moment of hesitation and she sighed, glancing away from Desponia for a moment. "The sins of the parent shall not reflect on the child," she muttered, scowling as she turned her aqua gaze back down to the woman in front of her as if she was appraising her for a moment. Even if she didn't like or agree with all of the Mendacium laws, she knew that none of them were there without a purpose—including this one. "I can not pin the blame of our mother's actions on you... but I can make sure the Mendacium blood and legacy you carry doesn't go to waste. You'll come with me and join the rest of my family in my band—whether you want to go willingly or not is up to you." Without looking she gave a flick of her paw to Ciemny that was perched near by and the raven took flight, wheeling off toward the island to fetch her husband just on the off chance that this grew into an ugly fight. She didn't think she would need his assistance, but she didn't want to risk it either.

Manea | Temno | Ciemny

There was a brief moment of hope, that this woman would actually follow through on what she was saying, that Desponia would in fact get to walk away from this moment, get the hell out of dodge and just live her fucking life, free of judgment over being born, something she'd never even fucking asked for! That's right you should! She thought to herself as she watched her half-sister though she had the forethought to know better than to say that out loud, to goad the woman before her into making this worse.

But Desponia's sister would not just shut up and move on and the woman was getting antsy, she felt her skin prickle as her half-sister told her she would come with her, if she wanted to or not. Her eyes flickered to the other woman's paw as she gestured and she considered for a moment her best course of action. But her sister had gotten under her skin and she wasn't exactly practiced at hiding her disdain. She growled, lifting her gaze to stare her sister in the eye as she spoke. "Try me." Her words were clear, she was choosing to fight. "If I'm not to be blamed for 'my mother's sins' as you call them, then why can't I just live my goddamn life without you thinking you have a right to poke your nose in my shit. Why not shove yourself up my ass while you're there?"

"Speech"

Image by Fiery-vulpes