[Rosanna]

It was only easier to acclimate into the tense world around her because her identity had never been compromised by pack culture.Beyond the pain that twist in her chest, sharper than any knife, the little rosy hell-dog can manage to breathe despite a fog of mucus in her throat. Sitting wide and deep like guilt's black mold. A manifested representation of anxiety. The same sort that had kept her complacent for most of her childhood - and would well into adulthood as well. It's strange ... so strange outside of the area she'd always known... but never had it been her to fear the unknown; Her twin had always managed to suffer the brunt of reality. And it'd taken Rosanna a long time to believe it existed. Despite the heavy undertone of her current youth. She'd been drug out to sea from her family, fabricating some great fantasy that'd died out holed up in a cove.

Rosanna almost calls for it's guidance - begging again for that sense of wonder in her chest... in the hushed silence of her own wandering mind where she's harshest to herself. Yet, still manages to draw strength through the link of silence. Wishful thinking enough motivation to keep the girl moving and moving. Until Saboro... her life... was miles behind her. Over crags and nannies, hills and valleys, -- further than her eye could make out the towering volcanos detail. Another reminder of that places cementing lore. Standing like a tall man to cast a great dark shadow Rosie would always feel just over her shoulder.

Free, but still at what price?

Paranoia... suspicion... it crawls and curls from the bottom of her gut to curl around her heart. It's tendrils branching out like a thorn bush. A heart-beat and she's reminded it's there. Further away, Rosanna needed to go further than anyone would miss her. Than she could remember how the jungle moss felt between her paw-pads. Until no face was familiar besides her own... Maybe trimming the briars might erase the pain eventually. In the mean time, the golden daughter weathers the storm. Drawn from her thoughts and dreams to jog further into the span of alien territory. Surrounded by nothing but expanding questions and new smells. 

Driven away hours from her trek, nowhere in particularly but by her own sense of direction. Until finally she loses the strength of running to her stomach. Abandoning her haze for nourishment that lacks the compass to guide. She has never been particularly well at hunting -- not since she'd lost the vision in an eye; Depth perception not nearly trained to accommodate yet. Though still though the gold wolf tries. And only by happenstance catches the smell of a rabbit, close enough she probably should have already realized.

A few minutes of investigating reaps rewards at a den. But the moment she comes into realization so does the other creature. Racing disastrously from it's hide to sprint through scrub underbrush and land. Leading the (promptly following) Rosanna on a wild chase that eventually rewards the animal it's freedom. But only when in the exact moment it's luck both run's out, like the breadth difference between a curse and a blessing. 

Someone else is among the brush, no more than fifty feet away. Though Rosanna could recognize the shade of brown blind in both eyes. She hadnt known what Lucas had meant about their other sibling... and the edges dont cut inside anymore when her heart rises to meet hope. 

Micah?

She's so afraid to think it, to call out, to want it - and instead Rosanna can only stare the distance between them stark legged and completely still. Her back still arched with body language, tense and surprised while long ears perk upward and outward to listen; Fearing all at once what it meant if it wasnt, and if it was. 

But.... "Chickadee?"

She has to know.

[Micah]

Micah had been walking. The road was long and lonely, and not really a road at all - there was no clear path or marked trail. But Micah was a tracker, or had been a tracker, once. And so she followed the sun and stars and north wind, even though she didn't know where she was headed to. She hoped to meet up with Asher again. She hoped to find her father. That was about all she knew. It was a big world out here, out from under the oppression of the jungle, but Micah wasn't afraid of the directionless path ahead of her. She was only afraid of what she'd left behind. And afraid for who she'd left behind. She still had family there, in the jungle, after all. But it couldn't be betraying family to try and survive, right? Would Lucas understand? At one point she was certain he would have, but she wasn't sure now. 

The pattern of that first fateful litter had been this: the boys, Abner and Lucas and Raylan and Dillinger, they looked at the abyss, you know? They got tangled. It's how Saboro gets ya. If you think even for a moment that you're in control, if you think even for a moment that maybe the system will save you, then you've already lost. None of the boys got out. The choices are to be eaten by monsters, to become a monster yourself, or to run. 

The boys never learned to run, but the girls were born bolting. Micah and Rosanna, they'd known from the beginning, hadn't they? They'd never had control. They didn't look at the abyss, didn't want to see the abyss, didn't want the abyss to see them. Micah still had a scar from where Coven had bitten her. She still had nightmares about red eyes and screaming siblings. Micah would have run past the border the moment she could walk, if not for her family. She loved them, her family, but they had always been nails in her feet to keep her from fleeing. You don't stop being hurt by people just because you love them, after all. 

So she was walking away. She'd been walking away for a while. It felt like dragging a long, long chain behind her. A chain connected to Lucas, to Abner, to Rine, to Estein's grave. To all the little nieces and nephews she'd never really gotten to know. Heavy shit. But she walked anyway. 

The grass and brush here was golden in the open light. Tall and waving in the wind. The brown dog hadn't noticed at first how close the stranger was, but when she heard a rustle, she ducked down, tense, hiding. Red eyes peered through the grass until they fell on a recognizably blue.

"Chickadee?" 

Holy shit. 

All pretense of fear was dropped to the ground with a clatter. Micah jumped, leaped onto her sister. She'd knock into her, tail wagging, paws scrabbling all over face and fur, affectionately trying to wrestle her to the ground with barks and yelps and careless joy. "Holy shit, Rosie. You're here, how in the hell'd ya get out here? Are you okay are ya healthy are ya hurt? Yer alive ya big dummy, you're alive, holy shit you're FREE."

[Rosanna]

Is... Is it okay for them to take a moment to themselves?

Oh, the anchor of family how it keeps your feet on the ground but tethers like chains to your ankles. 

But out of all her siblings she'd pulled together with... through circumstance... comradere... blood -- how fitting was it that Micah would be the one she found now. For Rosanna had once fallen beside the thorny girl before. A prologue to the pit that had kept her and Abner from almost certain death. Determined to return to a home they envisioned through children's eyes. From the start Micah had been the realist ( and later too), and if that'd been the case ... Rosanna was her polar opposite. Atleast at first... before the misshapen pull of her eye that burned still. Nothing Lucas could have done might take away the pain of Saboro it symbolized... despite the turn of events being more of an accident than wrathful consequence. Your worth determined by your rank. 

Rosie should have known that Micah would have been building up to it. Once upon a time they did nothing but share secrets. Of nightmares and the things within them. Faraway confiding that now could barely be remembered beyond the branches they had woven. Or what it meant to have shared them. 

With her sky blue eye watching nervously, the golden girl sways when Micah leaps but remains to break her older sister's fall. Something inside of her uncoiling and releasing, a weight lifted off of her shoulders to know she was not alone in the burden of their memories to bear. A siblings sometimes curable presence in someone to trust. Maybe not often in Saboro could you find solace in those you were raised with -- but the way they'd all been so loved. The way that Estein and Nate had taught each of them... It prohibited them morally from so many things, outcasted them (ultimately) in the hierarchy. Family before yourself. Yourself before Patriotism. A great weakness, but a great strength. And to have even a fraction of that equation manifest where she'd convinced herself of none... 

Rosanna barks in excitement, flipping onto a shoulder with a batter of soft paws. Gestures returned in smiling displays of teeth and submission. Spine curling along a bed of grass. Flattened with her see-saw. All at once Micah upon her with questions and familiarity. A difference to the other side of her solemn sibling that often trusted little but the earth beneath her feet. 

East would have liked her. Rune would have liked her. 

(family weren't the only ghost that would haunt her uncertainty)

"Somethin' provoked a herd of elephants inta stampeding."  Rosanna manages, her tail thumping along the soft folia beneath them. Paws laying to rest upon the top of her sisters breastbone and curl of her neck. A gentle pressure that's inviting but always a little polite. "I got close to the border to escape em... found Lucas a little busted up.." The golden dog laughs. It's both sad and hopeful. "He saw the wild in my eyes. Same wild Daddy had. Leave it t' Lucas to catch on before I really even did."

I miss him already.

Rosanna leans closer, and even with shaky control of depth perception manages to hopefully tussle her nose in a bit in the soft fur of Micah's downy. Curious as hell to sniff her and perhaps find familiarity in another scent. Though nothing particularly jogs her memory. 

"What are you doing out here? How? Whats th' chance that we run into another like this?" Another pointed grin and wag of her long tail. If only to emphasize the joy despite her anxieties..Staring out blankly with her dead eye beyond the trampled spot they lay. "Are we far enough...Ya' think??"

What were the odds and could they beat them?