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Aodh had simply had the urge to stretch his wings tonight--he hadn't expected to stumble upon his mom's tribe. Clan. Thing. It'd been a while since he'd seen her and the clan, so it wouldn't hurt to stop in. His family wasn't expecting him back for a while yet, anyway.

He landed at the edge of the group, so the wind of his landing wouldn't bother anyone too much. He quickly spotted his mom--by far the largest fox there--with two other vixens. It took him a minute, but he finally realized that one was Aki, the mother of Sparkles, Rai's mate. And the other..."You're one of my younger sisters?" The purple matched mom, but the markings were nothing like hers, so he was a bit unsure there.

"Yes. Her name is Talya. Talya, this is Aodh, one of my three older sons, about whom I have told you." It was surprising to see Aodh here, for Rina knew that her son did not share her passion for wandering. But as one of her children, he, like Talya, was welcome to stay with the clan for a while, should either of them so chose.

"It would be even more foolish for you to leave now, as malnourished and exhausted as you are," Rina pointed out to Talya. She could not possibly allow her daughter to leave in such a condition.

Talya's report was about what Rina was expecting, that none of the children knew what the others were doing, but there had been no harm by asking.

"Talya, huh. Nice to meet you. So what're you doing around here? You gonna join the clan?" Aodh asked as he flopped down by his mother and younger sister. He was pretty sure she wasn't a part of the clan, anyway, since he couldn't see the medallion, but he could be overlooking it, too--it was dark out, after all, and he definitely wasn't any kind of night person like Uncle Ari was.

Before she could even blink, she was surrounded by yet even more strangers. Two of them were loud and...well, kind of annoying. Why today? Why any of this?

"Hi," she told them shortly, resisting the urge to get up and just leave. She was usually very social and outgoing, but she was exhausted and irritable and just plain old upset today. Mother didn't care and now she was surrounded by more family.

Tal couldn't help but notice the bitter tone in her head when she thought about family now.

Well, no reason to take it out on her...sibling...and...nieces? "Er, sorry," she apologized. "Nice to meet you, big brother," she said with a weak smile. And he was very big. "And you guys too," she added to Zoicite and Beryl.

There, she'd been nice.

"Woahhh, a mountain lion!" Beryl and Zoicite said in unison, their eyes growing wide.

"Didja beat it? That's so cool! When? How old were you? Did you have help? Were you all alone? Did it hurt?" Beryl started to ask, but she quickly tried to reign herself in.

"Er...I mean, um..." Beryl started, blushing hotly. "Um...you musta been really brave is all I meant..." She glanced at Big Daddy and felt her ears droop--he didn't look happy to see them.

"Was it a big mountain lion?" Zoi asked as her sister finished rambling--Beryl liked to pretend she was better than the other two, or older or something, but Zoicite knew otherwise.

"If you want, Grandmama Elder Rina, I could run back and get the boys..." But she didn't really want to, and it was supposed to be a girl's day, but if Grandmama really wanted to meet Little Daddy and Malachite and Kunzite...

His daughters and mother seemed to be getting along fine. But Talya--his younger half sister was a stranger to him, but he was going to go out on a limb and say something was bothering her.

Excusing himself from the group as well, he followed after Talya.

"You alright?" he asked once he had caught up to her, tilting his head to one side.

Seemingly unfazed by the rapid-fire questions, Rina began to answer each of them in turn: "I escaped from it with my life, so I consider it a victory. It happened a long time ago--before I formed the Clan. No, I did not have any help, and yes, I was all by myself--I wandered alone back in those days. Yes, it did hurt rather a lot," and not even the remembered pain of the injuries severe enough to have left their marks on her body for all time was enough to break Rina's stoic character, "it was about average in height for a mountain lion, but it was very thin." It was surprising that the girls were asking so much about the incident in question--their father did not have as much curiosity as they did. That was a difference she was pleased to note.

"I would very much like to meet the rest of your family, if it would not be too much trouble to fetch them." She knew that others were not as used to traversing large distances as she, and so she would be considerate of her guests, if it so happened that the others were far away.

"Na-uh it's not a big deal at all Grandmama Elder Rina, everyone else is just over that ways a bit and it'll take Zoicite no time at all to go find them and bring them back it'll be like--ow! Nephrite, that's mean!"

"You said to stop you if you started rambling again," Nephrite calmly told her triplet.

Jadeite looked crestfallen. "But that hurt!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

Maylea frowned as she looked around and then up at the mountains ahead of her. She shivered once and then started moving forward again. She tried to keep rational and level headed, but she was excited. Ever since her chat with Boris she was looking forward to seeing what the world was like. The only bad thing about all of this was that Maylea had no idea which way to go. She did have enough common sense to know that she would have to find a tribe, or a place to survive the winter, or she would have to keep moving. Winter was coming and coming fast and staying in one place all winter didn’t seem all that appealing alone, so that left two options. Find a tribe and ask to stay with them for a season, or travel and hope that she could figure out how to survive alone in unfamiliar lands. She shook her head and hoped she wouldn't be spending the winter all alone. One thing Maylea didn't like was being lonely.

After so long of the tribe [being/remaining/WORDS] its current small size, one day Rina was startled to see not one, but three, new foxes approaching where the tribe had set up its camp at the base of their mountain, in the homeland.

Two of the foxes looked familiar, as though they could be family to Aki. As for the third, she appeared to be a complete stranger. She was no one Rina could remember having met before, or having heard of before. Nor did she bear any familial resemblance to anyone in the tribe, as did the two male strangers.

The two males might want to spend time with their family, but Rina did not know for what purpose the vixen came, and so it was to the vixen to whom Rina first approached.

"Hello," Rina called out, as she approached the girl. "I am Rina, Elder of the Gypsy Clan. Who might you be?"

The other female bore no signs of tribe affiliation, nor even any modification. She did appear to have wandered far, but that meant little; the Clan's homeland was far from the settlements of other foxes, and from other tribes, so it was only natural that one would have to walk a great distance to come to this place.

Beyond those two facts, there was little Rina could discern about the stranger, and so she could only simply wait for the other to speak to her.

Tybalt had been slowly catching up to the Gypsy Clan since he started tracking them. Single foxes normally moved faster than large groups as a general rule, and this situation was no different. Or at least it wouldn’t be if Tybalt hadn’t stopped to conduct his experiments. Spring and summer were the best times to work with flowers, though, so he had kept getting distracted. It was fall now, though, and he had perfected his paste for relaxation, freeing up his time for tracking the Clan.

Finally Tybalt had found them, nestled in some foothills under a large mountain. Picking his footing carefully, he headed into the gathering of foxes, spotting two brightly colored foxes just ahead of him. Music note earring tinkling lightly in his ear, Tybalt picked up his pace in order to catch up.

"Hello," he said to them, giving a small smile. "Are you part of the Clan? Or are you two hoping to join as well?"