Iopah awoke just before the dawn, just as she had for days now. Sprawled around her, hind-feet digging into cream-coated sides, were the Pines pups. They were growing rapidly now, hardly recognizable from the scraps they had been born as. But they were still young, despite how much of the communal den they took up. Her gaze ran over them in the fog of morning and she wondered. Camio and Inkheart were still missing, absences that would be glaringly obvious to Nalda and Arion. A dark foreleg twitched randomly and Iopah reached out to still it with her nose. Did they know their parents were searching? Did they suspect how poorly the searches were going? With a sigh the woman rose, detangling herself with care from the sprawl of pups for a discreet, early morning look for the missing males. Perhaps it was wrong to shield them like this, but it felt like admitting failure to tell them.

"Momma?" A quiet voice came from behind and Iopah's neck craned around at the question. "You's going to look for 'em, right?"

Iopah met the expectant eyes of her younger daughter, they were no longer puppy-blue. "Of course, Bracken." She hummed, taking a handful of steps back into the slumbering pile of pups. Once Bracken was mollified and falling back to sleep once again, Iopah slipped from the den. The morning was quiet, cast in shifting billows of white. She made her usual route, knowing the yearlings would soon be up and along the borders. Her form split the whiteness, cleaving like a ship through water. The falls were an enormous land marker, it was impossible to be lost in ear range of them. Her path went along the water nearly every morning, hoping to see a familiar figure and hoping not to see a floating body.

Today she saw something that was neither. Iopah watched Naira, pale feet shifting in the fog as she left the set-back route for a closer look. The woman was unfamiliar and seemingly brazen as the Reinier came from behind without a reaction. Her tail flicked at spine level, caught between proximity to her land and apparent innocent. Finally she cleared her throat, letting tawny-shaded ears rise purposefully. "What're you doing here?" Questions first, decisions of guilt later.