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When Nivalis had first been told of the letter that the Matron and her elders were sending to Chibale, it had been impressed upon her that its contents and reasoning were to remain a secret. She'd argued then against every point put before her. They were not weak. They didn't need help. They shouldn't leave their island. What goal did keeping this potential journey a secret actually accomplish? She'd tried to make reason out of the actions of the group of Alkidike that led her tribe and had come up mostly short, leading her to infer what she hadn't been told directly.

Of course a group of banished Alkidike wanted to return to their place of birth in a time of crisis. Aisha may not be the mother of she and her sisters. Aisha was not her goddess, but the woman her ruled her tribe had been born from a different tree, and if she was being threatened, it was still their duty to defend her...

If the Dretch were active everywhere, with emphasis on Chibale, being that that was where most of their targets resided (with only a much smaller cluster living in Zinris), then this could potentially be her Maton's last opportunity to see those of the tribe she had grown up with. As an aged mystic herself, the Matron had probably been there for the blooms of at least half of those who resided on Chibale. Maybe she had shunned them and been banished from her ranks, and maybe she claimed that the Elaria and the Extremists were her only family now, but she'd left many familiar faces behind, and Nivalis had always strongly believed that all of her sisters, no matter their path, were worth protecting...

Nivalis had grown up under the Matron's care. If anyone had had opportunity to impress a belief so strongly upon her, it would have been this woman.

Nivalis agreed with her sisters. The mainland Alkidike were weak and not worth saving. They weren't worth the effort of a long journey with uncertain outcome. She hadn't had any intention of leaving Yael again after the one opportunity she'd had when she was small...

But the Alkidike, weak or not, were family. Not sisters, no, but bloomed from the goddess that had given birth to the great tree Elzira. Even if Nivalis didn't care about Aisha, Chibale, or the Alkidike who lived there, the Matron had called her selfish for not having compassion toward those Alkidike who had started the Elarian tribe. They were in as much danger as those from the mainland. Perhaps moreso, since their fewer number meant for less-protected targets. And the Extremist Alkidike were still the ones asking for and raising most of Elzira's blooms.

How could she not care if her sisters' guardians were being abducted?

Fine, Nivalis had relented. Fine. But that didn't explain the need for secrecy. And it didn't make her any more pleased about the expedition, particularly not when the vast majority of the women who she was in the service of- the Elarians, not the Alkidike- were as disgruntled and displeased as she had been initially. Nivalis wasn't pleased, but nor was she angry, as some were. Her gaze flicked over her shoulder to Naqenni. She sighed. More than offended, Niva was resigned, and it wasn't a state of mind good for quelling others' dissatisfaction.

"What would you like me to say to satisfy you?" Nivalis asked stiffly of her eldest sister as she and the rest of her traveling troupe trekked onward. "If I had a proper answer, I would give it, but I don't. I doubt anyone does other than 'we must.'"