Ashborn was content as the rage that had fed her lifetime simmered on low somewhere in the back of her mind. It was not yet gone and she still wanted Heritage dead, but it had lessened since finding Extravagance and Opulence. Their own issues felt more difficult than her own on most days and she was glad to be a conduit of sorts between them even if their feelings for her paled in comparison to their mutual affections. Then, however, their were lines uncrossed that only she was privy to that made her feel special and wanted. Far more than anyone had before; perhaps more than anyone ever would. And yet still, she couldn't stop missing her siblings, her mother. Even Lightning Strike.

Family was nothing however without love and it was far too apparent that her own did not love her. They had chosen Heritage. The father that had left them and only by rare circumstance had he found them at all. He never would have looked for them (she forcibly resisted the urge to remind herself that he could not have looked for something he did not know even existed) and that was a crime in and of itself. He had only found them because of Grey's resemblance, because of Keepsake's stories, because of a pet wolf that looked so much like a father long gone. If the not-twins had been hunting—no, only Grey and herself truly resembled the buck.

If only they had chosen her, they could still be a family. They hadn't needed him in the beginning; why did they need him now? And why was she so easy to live without?

Lonely Only wasn't sure where he was. Well, no, he knew he was here. He just didn't know where exactly here was. He knew a few things, such as how it was far from the waters. Otherwise Wants would be bobbing nearby. He was alone again. The absence of a companion had never been so pronounced now that he was aware of it.

Solitude had never bothered him. Well, no, it always had he just never acknowledged it. And he wasn't going to start now.

He made his thoughts focus on something, anything, else. And in this instance, he began to hum a tune of an acha's attempt at whale-song. Accuracy was not the priority. Filling in the silence was.

Sensitive hearing was—the doe cringed, ears swiveling back and flattening down against her skull. What in the hell was that caterwauling? It was upsetting and loud and she didn't know whether to run from it and hope the creature did not follow or run towards it and rip out its throat to prevent such disastrous sounds from ever filling her ears again. The longer it went on the more it upset her and, in fact, it was beginning to make her feel extremely nauseous. A shudder ripped through her body at the wrong moment and she dashed into the nearest bushes and vomited up what had been a fairly nice meal.

It reeked, of course, and she had to back away quickly to prevent herself from losing anything else. She felt her shoulders dip as she struggled to swallow back the disgusting bile before she gave up and dove into a nearby pond, mouth open as she sucked water down her throat.

"Oh, MotherFather, please stop that," she voiced, not expecting anything to happen.

The acha comes to a sudden halt in surprise, unaware that he wasn't alone. Embarrassment slowly crept up from his chest to his face, the knee-jerk indignation of being insulted however allowed him to maintain his composure long enough to respond, "Well, only because you said please."

He'd been pretending to be alright by himself and now he wasn't. He didn't intend to drive off this other kin and hoped she wasn't simply passing through. "Do you prefer I sing something else?"

Ashborn blinked, looking around wildly and craning her neck until she saw an acha that looked like he had been stitched together. Oh. Well that was not what she had been expecting at all. She hadn't imagined a kin could even make that sort of caterwauling noise. She hadn't even expected it to be a creature that could understand her adverse reaction and had imagined that she would have to, perhaps, crawl her way out of the area until her senses had stopped aching and wobbling like a leaf on the ocean's waves. Still, she had not meant to be rude and she was finding herself rather upset on his behalf.

"I, I didn't realize it was a kin. It, I'm sorry," she felt inclined to attempt to explain herself. "The vibration made me feel a little sick...," she tried and then tensed. That sounded like an insult which was not the intent even if it did fit to some degree. Whale song should be left to the whale sharks and not to kin, in her not at all humble opinion.

"Yes, please, if you'd like to sing," she agreed eventually as she sat and then proceeded to lay down. She was tired and maybe she could fall asleep if he sung something a little less, awful. What You Lost would have done both as sisters only could. It would have been funny and laughter would have ensued. A thought that was quite unwelcome at the time since she was trying to make her own family and forget about the one that had chosen that beast they called father.

"Don't your siblings like to listen to your songs?" she asked after a moment.

Lonely Only shook his head at the apology, "It's nothing to apologize over!" He wasn't exactly sure how his whale song sounded to someone other than himself but even if it had been something to behold, the acha didn't want to be alone. So he would acquiesce to the doe's request to stop and he was more than happy to accept her invitation to sing something else.

"Um, I do have something else I could sing for you." He cleared his throat to start the initial chords when the doe asked about siblings. The beginning melody cut abruptly and Lonely Only looked askance. "I do not have siblings. I emerged from my egg alone and..." he wasn't sure how welcome the doe would be to hearing about him. He wasn't sure he could burden a complete stranger with his issues. It wasn't fair to her.

There were days that Ashborn thought herself inevitably cursed. And as her question of siblings revealed that the buck had none . . . Fucking hell. She had never meant to be cruel but she could hear the sadness that coated each word and she felt herself simultaneously flush in embarrassment and go cold in upset. It had never occurred to her that a kin could be without siblings. She had been so intertwined with her own as a foal, as a filly, as an adult, that it was insanity to consider anyone could grow up alone.

"None?" she stammered, "How, how did you survive?" she asked, completely flummoxed and also in awe. Here was this small acha, all alone in the world, and he had lived. All by himself. Ashborn didn't think she could live all by herself even now and she hadn't. She'd been found by the twins and though the relationship was nothing like that of her parents, it was still a relationship that offered companionship and help. What was it like to have no siblings, no family? She'd thought that was what she wanted but now . . .

Lonely Only tilted his head in confusion at the question. It was such an odd thing to ask. To the acha, surviving was just something you had to do otherwise you wouldn't be there anymore. Genuinely unsure, he cautiously offered "Erm, I hunted and ate what I could? Then I slept when I felt sleepy? I... I wandered a lot. Sometimes following after other herds, other times going their complete opposite direction."

He managed to keep himself from adding how more often than not he would simply wake up alone. That wasn't something he did but something that just happened to him so he didn't think it was appropriate to mention.

"Sort of like breathing. I just. I just did what I had to do." He hoped the chipper tone in his voice masked his confusion.

Ashborn shook her head, ears flicking downward and flattening out, "No. I, I know the actions you took to live. I have had to learn them myself." She sighed, not quite sure that she wanted to go down this path at all, but . . .

"How do you deal with the loneliness? The time with no one but yourself?" It had all but killed her to be alone those first few minutes. It was only the hours and the day which had evened out the pain and then the acha had found her. In them she'd been able to drown her sorrows and bury the anguish. Without them, she thought she would have died.

The acha found himself smiling despite the somber topic. It was something he was painfully aware of with his every waking moment. He came to wake with loneliness already in his being, he didn't know how not to be. How should he explain it? Could he even?

"I suppose I just remind myself that. We are one." It sounded like pithy platitudes to the buck, especially coming from Lonely Only himself. "Maybe not in the physical sense. But I just try to remember that we are all children of the MotherFather. One day we will all be one with each other."

It wasn't a guarantee to help but he did sometimes find solace in this belief.

"That's," Ashborn started and then stopped, unsure. It was lovely that maybe one day she would be returned to those that she loved. It was also terrible. "I suppose it is what you make of it," she finally said. "Thank you."