Cetseni wakes, and it is not where she'd rested her head the night before. Mother, siblings, the saatsine, they'd all gone, vanished as if they'd never been there in the first place. Small hawk rises to shake the dirt from her fur and surveys the land that surrounds her, jagged rock and high slopes, the girl uses the vantage to look out over the valleys below.

And yet she cannot see the sea. She wonders now if she'd been killed and buried in the ground, her soul forsaken to walk with land spirits, lanzadoii spirits, sharadoii spirits. Not muradoii. Her first thought is one that rejects this notion, and she brings the pad of her paw to sharp rock with urgency, slicing a line across. The sting, the warm flow of sanguinous fluid dripping from her paw and dotting the stone beneath; it told her all that she needed to know.

Cetseni was not forsaken yet. A glimmer of relief would light up scarlet eyes, she saw this now for what it was; a trial, a proving. She accepts that her mother must have brought her here in the night and left her to find the way back, because glum as it might've been, it truly was the only explanation that made any sense to her. Cetseni knew that she was but flesh, easily rended, easily replaced; and she'd seen how close the dreadqueen had gotten to the Sun chief. Mother shed no tears when she tore the life from Pipaksriruk and condemned her to rot, and so Cetseni knew that it would be no different for her. Nor Yakone. Nor Tso'kun.

One good thing about travelling among the lanzadoii, despite the odd stench of them, was that they'd prepared her legs for such a journey. She orients herself and searches for any sign of her mother's bloodscent, but the area is barren, and she hasn't even the slightest idea of where to start. Instead, she searches for the taste of salt on the breeze, so that it might've brought her to the sea, if she could get there, she could make an offering of blood and flesh and call upon her muradoii foremothers to guide her, bless her. She would bleed many in their name.

She looked to the sky and the dark, shifting clouds moving overhead, a storm brewing within, confirmed as rain began to fall. Be it far from her to admit, but she worried for her siblings, if they too had been given this trial. She knew she shouldn't have, the words of Sivaak bleed through; a doctrine played a thousand times in her mind with the hopes that at one point it might've freed her of the shackles of love.

If your leg breaks, you crawl. If your sister dies, she becomes food for the earth.

This was the way of the muradoii. Cetseni begins her march to the end of land.

Yakone wasn’t looking for anything in particular. She’d taken a sudden interest in ‘mapping the land’. Her little charitable cause to Saatsine. Besides, enough time had passed that she was certain the rest of their band had perished, and she couldn’t care less. She’d already lost Pipa. It’s not like she’d be heartbroken if she never saw Ceti again.

So searching around was a waste of time. She wasn’t doing that. She was scouting.

It was merely a freak happenstance that sister should come upon sister, and only surprise that Yakone’s breath catches upon the rawness of her throat. Cetseni was very much alive. Thinner, and far less composed than the raven would have liked to see of the hawk.

The silver muradoii cub drops down into the soggy earth near Ceti.

“Took ya long enough,” she snorts. Her tone is flat. Her twin gaze flitters.

Found you.

A dark tipped ear swivels quick to the sound of a voice, one that was delightfully familiar, and shed the severity of it all in an instant.

Wha-ah! What are you doing here? Cetseni turns around sharply, startled by her sister suddenly descending from above, and right after she'd just made her peace with losing her too—Ceti's cheeks burned red with embarassment, as if Yakone could've read her mind and seen how dramatic her thoughts had just been.

The fur on her hackles slowly smoothes back down, her expression turning to one of exasperation. You don't need to help me Yakone. I can do this on my own. A little growl rumbles between her teeth. Her posture straightening while she stands in front of her, her tail rising as a testament to her pride.

---

she's so cute <3

“And what exactly is ‘this’?” The girl clicks her tongue. She looks around: they’re alone, with nothing but windy cliffs and swaying grass far as the eye can see.

“It’s boring as shit out here.” She gives Cetseni another once-over. “Besides, I’m not here ta hold your paw. Believe it or not, I have better things to do than babysit you through your little walk-of-shame back to Sivaak.”

What was Ceti expecting anyway, a celebration upon her return? Yakone scoffs. This is as warm a welcome as she was gonna get.

"This? She left us, didn't she? It's a test." She raises a brow, because it is the most plausible, obvious answer, and skips a pace forward so she glare at her sister properly. What- Did she not? Do i sleepwalk? Did I fall that far behind? She says with a slight crook of her head, equal parts exaggerated sarcasm and perhaps a little bit of genuine concern.

She looks out across the world below the peaks, bleak, windy, cold world. Not even caribou in the fields below. The thought reminds her of the hunger pang in her gut. Her gaze drifts back over to Yakone, watching her hunter's form lord over her. "What better things?"

Yakone doesn’t have an answer. Did they need one? Sivaak was a warrior goddess. She wasn’t raising daughters— she was honing weapons.

“So you want your life to be difficult.” Yakone shrugs. It was noble of Ceti, really. And a complete waste of time.

The girl smirks when sister questions her, giving her tail a little arrogant flick for emphasis. “Literally anything else.” She watches for shades in the young hawk’s expression with impatience. They were reunited, was she really going to debate the merits of lone survival?

“Scouting. Hunting,” the cub adds, red eyes smoking. She couldn’t wait all day for her sister to come to her senses.