That torn yearning which sometimes drew her eyes west, sometimes instead it called to her feet, and this evening was one of those days. The west was not only the direction of her previous life, though - it was also where she had come across the charming but broken @Mirren, the wise and healing @Veho, sharp @Yennifer, helpful and patient @Nicolò, the amiable wolves of Grizzly Hollow, @Cinder and @Rook, and perhaps most of all, her darling @Ash and his family. @Athena had not been on the mountain, just as she had suspected from his tone, but she had not been able to summon the strength to venture back down and tell him. Caught up in her own head, with her children and memories and lost opportunities, she had chosen to remain primarily on her sweet mountain. It grounded her, gave her a solid foundation upon which she could rebuild her life.  

But it called to her feet this day, as the sun was making its lazy descent, and she followed it down, knowing which forest lay in its wake. Wispy and dark, almost ominous, where the wind carried whispers from nobody. Bella avoided it, knowing the woods as a thin scar which hugged the mountain, threatening to sweep up and swallow it. She did not know the significance of the place, know that her blood family had once lived there, though if she had, perhaps it would have amplified her distaste.

She had little choice this day, as her feet were called down, and she rationalised that she would not enter the woods, would stop before she crossed that barrier - but the trees came, and with ears held flat, she passed beneath them, unable to stop, pulled by an undeniable force. The incline of the mountain beneath her began to level out, and before she abandoned its comfort all together, finally she found the willpower to pause. Heart beating lightly, beating quickly, she lifted her gaze, staring at the tall, dense trees around her and trying to find the sunset through their closing fingers. The corpse of a huge tree lay before her, fell perhaps years ago by some storm, or rot, or whatever lay waste to such enormous beings. Its trunk still stood proud, dead but proud, as wide around as her body length, and several feet tall. The rest of the severed tree lay further on, pulled down by the slope of the hill and now in its final resting place, where it would no doubt stay until it rotted away completely.

Quietly, reverently Bella approached the fallen tree, pressing her nose against it for a moment to commit its soul to memory. With a deep breath and tensed thighs, she carefully jumped upon the grand log, balancing easily on its wide frame, and slowly walked down its length. She looked at each branch, each snapped protrusion, each knot and twist of the ghostly bark. Coming to the end, where the trunk split into too many branches to walk upon, she hopped down, and headed back to the stump.

Settling her rump down, Bella set her gaze upon the broken remains, and her mind wandered.

Faintly the sound of footsteps made its way to her ears, soft but amplified by the heavy silence which had set about her. Perhaps it was the forest itself and its long mourning for its fallen companion, she mused, not yet bothered by the second presence in the woods - for surely there were hundreds of creatures within a hundred yards, hidden and going about their business, so why concern herself with one more? But then it stopped, and instincts told her to glance in their direction, just to be safe, just to make sure. Feet that soft, but loud enough to be noticed, could be dangerous, she supposed, but it turned out in her favour; a man stood some distance away, watching her, his posture calm and nonthreatening. Briefly she thought of @Mirren and the time he had been watching her in the rain. Perhaps it wasn't safe to slip into her reveries off the mountain, she thought with a small smile.

The silence between them did not persist; gently he spoke, his words all politeness, and the light in her face grew as she watched him. "By all means," she called back, ears pressing towards him in curiosity as she watched for his next action. A strange thing to ask of another loner, but then perhaps he thought there was some pack nearby to impede his travel. Or perhaps he was merely initiating conversation, which, she decided, would be a welcome distraction. "This woodland is owned only by itself, don't let me stop you."

For a moment Bella was unsure whether he would pursue company or use her 'permission' to pass on through, as he called it. Neither would have bothered her, for his business was his own, and she held no burning desire to find it out. Indeed, though, he did approach her, closing the distance between them, bringing himself into easier view. His creamy tones reminded her so of her daughter, though they were located in all the wrong places, and though she could see the softness of his eyes, the shadows cast by the trees meant that she missed their subtle difference in colour. He seemed weary, or perhaps lost, which might have explained his initial question.

A needless apology slipped through his lips, and she smiled and shook her head, dismissing it. An ear pricked towards him as he spoke, his indecision only reinforcing her theory that he was lost, or perhaps just aimless. His politeness endured over all; introducing himself, and asking for her to do the same, she smiled further, shifting her body so that she was sat facing him.

"Bella," she said, finding that different circumstances of meeting called for different levels of propriety; sometimes throwing out her whole family name sometimes felt like overkill. They were just two strangers happening upon each other in a shaded, lonely place; there was no need for high civility, only basic kindness. "Do you not know where you are going?"

She watched him, liking the sound of her name in his voice, liking the implied acceptance in his repeating it. There was surprise in his tone when he realised she'd guessed of his state of limbo, but again she just smiled, not wanting him to misunderstand her question for malevolence. "I... don't really have a plan anymore," he confessed, and her heart ached quietly for him as she recognised some measure of that aimlessness.

A moment passed, and she opened her mouth to reply but hesitated because she saw hesitation in his face too, and wondered what he was holding back. The moment was broken when he turned the question back on her, but was that to divert away from his situation, away from what he had been wanting to say? Or was she misreading him? Deciding that she would run with his change in topic, at least initially, she replied, turning her head to indicate her lofty home to the east: "I'm only a visitor here. I belong to the mountain."

This time she hesitated, but not long enough for him to take hold of the new thread of conversation, wanting to find out what was ailing this Kenelm Ashfoot. To be lost, of foot and soul, in the Ghastly Woods was a deeply unpleasant prospect, and not one she would wish on anyone. "What is in the east?" she asked quietly, gently, hoping she wasn't overstepping her rights to ask such a thing, one stranger to another.

The question, delicately-meant, was met with appropriate understanding. Bella was relieved for that. Ashes and ghosts, he said, and she felt the weight behind it, sensing significance in the very fact that he chose to speak so little of it. What had he left out there, and how far had he come to escape it? Ashes and ghosts, he had said, and she was reminded of the pack which had once resided in the Sacred Grove, the pack which had perished in a fire so many years ago. Was his story similar?

 Nothing I could call home. That struck a chord with her, if only because of how strong a concept home was to the woman, and she wondered even harder just what he was running to leave behind. They were, however, both of them fighting for control of the steering wheel of the conversation, her trying to turn it towards what haunted him, and he twisting it the other way. Considering that they were not her demons, and she could not begin to understand how strong they were, she respected his attempts and let him veer them away, drawing the topic back to the present.

The topic was an easy one, and she brightened as she realised just how lost Kenelm must be. To not even have learned of the land he was wandering it, even its name! She was almost honoured to be able the one to tell him. "This is Relic Lore," she said, an unmistakable pride, a love in her tone. "It stretches from the lowlands to the north, down to the fireweed hills in the south, and from the cedarwood forest in the west to the red hills of the east. That is Serpent's Pass," she said, indicating the mountainous and rocky expanse which cut straight through the middle of the Lore, as far as you could see from here. She looked to the mountain's peak, then slightly to the south of it, and then further south still, introducing them as though they were friends: "the Mountain of Dire, the Lost Lake, and Riddle Heights, and all the secrets hidden between. This side of the Pass," she said, turning back to Kenelm, "is Eden. We're to the north, and this place is called the Ghastly Woods. I've... always found it to be an appropriate name." Today, though, the eerie-toned woodland had not given her whispers, but pleasant company. Watching him, she wondered if his question had been sufficiently answered, or whether he had gotten far more than he bargained for. As a means to explain, she said, "I was born here," and hoped he would understand her enthusiasm.