To be quite frank, Angier Lyall was on the top of the world despite how still and cold Relic Lore was around him. Elettra had filled his heart with fire, weighted his feet with sandbags full of her words, turned his bones into titanium with her persuasive ways, and planted in him an unspoken promise of what could be theirs. Angier Lyall aside from his currently temperamental stomach (which was nearing its threshold in terms of hunger) could not have been any better. Sköll had taken the last bit of rabbit he had been saving near the pack den, @Morganna might have given him the dirtiest of looks, and @Asriel might have scoffed in his face as he took off on @Elettra's hour-old trail, but he could have cared less...

The morning he struck out from the heart of Willow Ridge, he had a subtle sort of grace in his step; the way he strode over the border was silent. Each of his premeditated strides exuding from him a powerful aura he had never felt in his life until now. As the sun seemed to struggle in its attempt to shine through the dense winter storm clouds, the Lyall lifted his pale eyes to the welkin. For a time he relished it all - the open air that spaced the willow trees further apart on the edges of Hush Meadow, the crispness of the slight breeze, and the silence of the world around him.

A gust of wind ruffled his tawny pelt and brought his eyes back down to the earth and the miles of virgin snow that laid before him. His ears began to ring and, in a slight panic, he tossed his gaze over each of his shoulders before continuing onward in his trek to scavenge anything of value to bring back to his pack.

Angier was just about ready to retreat towards more familiar territory when a shrill voice snatched at his ear drums. "Sir!" The Lyall turned about, equally startled when he had been discovered by the stranger through the morning mist. He had just missed her. Her near-immediate display of submission caught him in a second wave of surprise. It would be a while yet until the Lyall got used to being offered such a gesture. Finally, it was not just his size that was making others shrink back, but also the confidence in his step and the tang of Elettra's signature perfume in the thick of his pelt. It provoked the smallest of smiles on his face when he fully recovered and she offered an apology, her name, and her title.

"Please forgive my intrusion, Sir. Naia Aegina, of Cut Rock River."

The declaration made the tawny brute stand up even taller than he had been when he first arose at dawn, and he looked down upon her in unmistakable suspicion. "Cut. Rock. River," he slowly enunciated each of the three words that made up the title of this... foreign pack. He had never heard of it before. It must have been newly established, but by who? Angier had to wonder quietly to himself as he began to wamble in a partial circle around her to relax his limbs once more. Though he knew the reason why Elettra had returned to Willow Ridge in such a state last August, he knew very little of what had occurred between the Dark Lady and the man who had had the gall to make her bare her teeth. It was with pleasure and, yet blissful unawareness, that the Willow Ridge Leader grinned at the back of her head from where she crouched down in the snow.

The words he spoke was too nonchalant and apathetic in his mouth, but the smug expression on his face spoke of other concerns. Namely the fact that the woman could have possibly made up the name. One whiff of her coat lent him all he needed to know: she smelled faintly of Cedarwood Forest and the stale scents of the Marsh. The last time he checked, Kade and Ava Attaya had taken over where his brother had once reigned. Maybe something had happened to them... Maybe... but he wasn't about ready to derail his current train of thought for the sake of curiosity. His ears came back to their usual positions atop his crown, "I've never heard of it."

He walked around her so that the circle he had made was a complete ring around where she had plunked down. "Angier Lyall," he extended in turn, coming to a standstill at last as he stood directly in front of her. "Leader of Willow Ridge." His bottle brush of a tail waved about in the air like a banner before lowering into a more casual position just above the deep indentations he had made in the snow. "I've only managed t' count to... lessee..." in a rather dramatic fashion he tilted his head to one side before righting it again. "Fifty.... Six... 'til you showed up." A scowl was starting to make itself apparent in the washed out mask on his face, "What would a Cut Rock River wolf be doing so far from home an' so close to the Willows?"

In all of Angier's carefree, travel-'til-his-feet-stopped-itching days, the Lyall had never even heard of such a landmark with what he imagined to be a modest creek with stones that were flat and sharp enough to make a wandering wolf think twice about crossing it. Sure, he had made some rounds in the past few years, but he was starting to think that, perhaps, it was so far north or so far south or east that he had not yet been to where this "Naia Aegina" and her kindred had made their residence. "Who sent you? Where are ya headed?"

The woman could have offered her information on a silver platter and Angier Lyall still would not have been satisfied. Okay, so she followed a Leader called Maksim Baranski and that Maksim Baranski had taken up leadership after his former leaders left. The Leaders of the pack before this "Maksim" decided to move was also called "Darkwater Rapids." Well... so what was Angier to do with all of that? He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as he mulled over the new information he had just received. He hadn't heard of Darkwater Rapids either, but his sense of curiosity was not extrusive enough to make him ask about it.

Naia seemed to shift into a state of mind that was pressing her to make her leave and make it soon, but the Lyall was not about ready to let her go. After all, she had stated out loud that she was currently not running errands for Maksim Baranski and had apparently not made plans to venture any further past the Drooping Willows. There was still one other thing, though, that was just nagging and crying out at him to be asked. "Why do you seem like yer in such a hurry then?," he questioned, his words heavily laced with suspicion now when he caught the canniness in her tone. "Never mind," he shrugged, hastily shushing her before she could even open her mouth to answer him, "Don't answer that... Tell me this instead." He arched a brow at her, the scowl on his face prone to darkening by the second, "Do Kade and Ava Attaya know who you are?"

"The Attaya pair are the leaders I spoke of previously," Naia answered and it all came crashing down on the top of his mousy-brown head. "The leaders that departed-- vanished really-- in the floods that forced Darkwater Rapids to evacuate." Angier shook his head as though he were initially denying her words. It took him several seconds to answer; he had not even thought about just how much time had passed since Borden and Jaysyek had left, when he had joined Willow Ridge, and the day he had found himself as an acting Leader beside Elettra Archer. He tried to count the months by the number of full moons he had seen but found that he could no longer remember; the near-constant snow clouds and almost endless blizzards had skewed his count.

In all actuality it had been just over nine whole months.

She had never met them and she said that she was sorry if Kade and Ava had been friends of his. They hadn't, but it was within their paws that his brother Borden and his mate Jaysyek had left the legacy of Grizzly Hollow - the place where the Lyall bloodline had been forged and, for a time, brought to prominence within Relic Lore. Now, it was all gone. Abandoned like a haunting site and wiped out by a tumultuous flood. At the very least, he drew some comfort from knowing that the original Leaders of Grizzly Hollow - at least, Jaysyek, anyway - were kept safe within their new safehold in the westernmost reaches away from the Lore and Cedarwood Forest.

Eventually his face wrinkled in disappointment and zeal, anger and outrage. His limbs locked and as he stood before her, likening himself to a stone tower, anchored within the roots of the willow trees, "You tell yer @Maksim Baranski that I would like to 'ave a word with 'im then. When the snow is no longer on th' ground. Got it?" The grimace on his face was now more apparent than ever as his mind drifted back to when he last saw his brother. "He and I have some things to discuss. You tell 'im that a friend of Kade an' Ava's will be waiting."

Angier turned his head briefly to close his eyes, the bridge of his nose scrunching up into deep wrinkles that distorted his snout. It might have all been wishful thinking but a whole list of unanswered questions that he had left in the past had started to spring up, and all of a sudden, the Lyall was determined to somehow obtain the truth of it all (and then some), in-person, from the new Leader's lips.

The spritely woman repeated his statement back to him, confirming that she would take his message to her Leader. Only one small part of him could release a small sigh, the rest of him remaining rigid while the information she had given him repeated in his head several times over in the silence that stretched on for a moment between them. His facial expression smoothed out enough so that when he finally set his full attention back on Naia, he could give her a firm nod. No more judgement or disdain, skepticism or teasing...

She announced that, with his consent, she was going to leave. To return home. To go back to Cut Rock River.

Angier's head dipped down once more, more reverently than it had before. There was nothing left to be said for the time being; nothing to be understood, agreed upon or negotiated. She had given him much more information than he had initially bargained for and, for that, he found he could allow her to leave. "Go," he woofed. Then, with a streak of uncharacteristic concern for a scout like her, "Take care." He waited for her to make her move, to turn about and reorient herself as to start heading back to where she had come from, before letting his shoulders relax and allowing his tail to drop down to its natural position at the backs of his ankles.

Kade and Ava had formed their own pack - Darkwater Rapids, he had to take a moment to be sure that he had mentally taken note of it - and a flood had forced them to move. He sniffled as he, himself, finally started to quietly wander back into the heart of the Drooping Willows, still mulling everything over. Maksim Baranski had been the one to lead Kade and Ava's pack from Darkwater Rapids, and under Maksim Baranski the pack Cut Rock River had been formed. Did that mean that Kade and Ava were truly no longer living within Relic Lore? Most importantly, did that mean that Grizzly Hollow had also gone when Borden and Jaysyek had left?

The Lyall had to stop to keep himself from blindly wandering in the wrong direction. He blinked a couple of times as he regained his bearings, eyeing the trees for some sort of marker while taking a few deep breaths to break himself away from his train of thought. If he and Naia had come to some sort of awareness and understanding for one another then Angier had nothing to worry about; for when the snows had finally melted and Spring had finally come, he would hold an audience to the only wolf who possibly had the last remaining connection with his brother's fallen kingdom.