The closer they get to his home the more she notices the way he moves ahead only to slow himself back down to wait for her. It's...sweet. And Dyname feels conflicted considering this of a mortal. So she pretends not to notice. Even while her breathing grows rougher with the movement and distance. The walk has taken more out of her than she had expected, as this mortal body continues to prove its limitations. Every uneven patch of ground jars painfully through her ribs, careful breaths growing shallower the longer she forces herself onward. And by the time the end has arrived, exhaustion hangs visibly from her small frame, dragging at her paws and pulling her nose downward.

"We're here." the announcement is a wave of relief, and she slowly lifts her dual toned eyes. This was his home, but it was foreign to her, where she longs for the salty air and the crashing waves this place smells of warmth, earth and wolves, layers of overlapping scents that speak of family. It feels so full, and Dyname feels so out of place.

Her eyes follow him as he pushes together leaves and dirt into a makeshift little nest imperfect and uneven and entirely sincere, her eyes soften through their fatigue.

"you get cahmfortable i'll call me mahm" Okay... by the time she lowers herself her composure slips, the movement sending sharp pain through her chest as her body curls instinctively around herself ears dropping as she breathes through it in careful short little pulls.

—

Weakness plagued Lyra less and less each day. But enough to feel it, still, the weight of a limitation. It reminded her often and again of less visible restraints. The uncertain world she found herself in, where forgiveness of another and salvation for the self could become one and the same.

She had been distant, knowing it was likely by now others would notice the lengthy sourness of her mood. She knew too that the further along time went, the less obvious her ailments, the less excuse they would be willing to proffer for her attitude.

So she tried to do what she had so often done in the past, grit her teeth and press on. She didn't understand why it was harder, now, than when she had been a whelp fresh stolen from home by unkind faces.

Speaking of whelps — Lonán's call lifted Lyra's attention from the preparing of fishes. She licked the sharp bite of scales off her lips and hurried out to find her son.

He was not alone. A girl dressed like starlight on water, collapsed into a makeshift bed. Fast breath, like someone wounded. And Lonán, hovering like a hen. Captain held herself upright and cocked her brow at him, with a grim tug of lip that still somehow levied amusement his way. Who's tis ten, Mo Chuisle?