Kiva’s ears remained angled toward Serrune as she listened, the playful expression she’d worn only moments before giving way to quiet attention. The other girl’s answer wasn’t what she’d expected. There wasn’t a single lesson or mentor that had magically made everything click. There had been hardship. Survival. Somehow, that felt honest.

Her gaze drifted over the grasses, following the lazy bend of the trail as a warm breeze stirred through it. She hummed absently, thought back to all the miles she’d covered over the years. Delivering herbs, carrying messages, racing storms, crossing familiar paths so many times that she’d stopped noticing the places between where she started and where she was headed.

“Speed gets you there, patience will bring you back,” Kiva repeated softly, the words settling somewhere deep in her chest. A grin tugged at one corner of her muzzle. “Well. That probably explains why I arrived here just fine and then immediately got myself lost.” She laughed under her breath, shaking her head before her expression softened again.

“I was a messenger back home. Fast was always the goal. If someone was hurt, you ran. If someone needed medicine, you ran. If there was news worth carrying, you ran harder.” Her left paw scratched at the ground as she looked down at the earth beneath her paws. “You start believing that stopping is wasting time.”

Her amber eyes lifted to Serrune again, carrying an unmistakable warmth. “You make it sound like paying attention is its own destination.” She smiled, smaller now, but no less genuine. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a forest that way. I always treated it like something to solve. Find the trail. Find the shortcut. Find the next landmark.” She glanced toward the surrounding vegetation, taking in the swaying stems, the shifting shadows, the countless little details she’d overlooked before. “Maybe I’ve spent so long trying to get somewhere that I forgot places are worth being in, too.”

Curious now, she stepped away from Serrune and lowered her nose toward the fading tracks again. This time she resisted the urge to immediately decide what they belonged to. Instead she lingered. Damp earth carried the memory of the morning. Warm stone baked beneath the afternoon sun. Crushed grass released a fresh green scent beneath her paws, while the faint musk of the traveler that had passed through had already begun dissolving into everything else around it. Her ears flicked thoughtfully as she lifted her head again.

“I think I understand what you meant.” There was quiet satisfaction in her voice, not because she’d mastered anything, but because she’d finally stopped trying to. “The tracks aren’t the whole story. They’re just one sentence.” She looked back at Serrune with an easy, crooked grin.

“Now I have to ask something important. If I make a completely confident guess about what left these tracks, how badly are you going to judge me when I’m wrong?”