Children created imaginary friends.  A fantastical game.  Secret companions for nonsensical adventures.  Aine hardly presented an exception.  Only her choice in imaginary friend presented an unfortunate complication.

Children dealt with grief strangely at times.  Naïve bemusement.  Complete and lack of belief.  In the case of the petite vixen... An imaginary friend.  At some point in time, the little druid became more and more aware of her mother and brother's... Absence in her life.  They burned away in the fire that took her home away from her.  The fire that brought her father and her to the Pitt.

Only, young and naïve, she failed to understand.  Simply, in her mind, they had just fallen behind.  One day her bright, hazel hues would find her brother, her mother, in their sights.  They were not gone for good.  Right.  Right?

Aine may seem bold to a few.  She seemed to care little if one were a stranger, she'd still go up to them.  Only, the child often did so out of the fear she may need to talk to them later, without knowing whom she was speaking to.  How rude would that be?  Other children, considering they were simply children with no rank, lacked the same... Importance, in a way.  As such, she struggled making friends.

Already quiet in voice and overall anxious in mind, Aine found herself with next to no friends within the Pitt's borders.  Ironically, on her one adventure outside of the Pitt, she had made a friend of a young pirate.  A secret friend, really.  She had not mentioned him to a single soul.  But since they lived so far away, she lacked any constant companionship.

Ever the energic child however, with a constant drive in her paws to move and explore and imagine, she created within her mind a companion at her side.  Her brother.  She remembered well, considering he looked so much like her, albeit with some of their father's darker colorations.  Alaire Antoine Ó Broin was her best friend, as a sibling often was.

He followed her to the garden, protected her in the jungle as she hunted for herbs, and altogether remained her best friend.  Only he didn't exist.  Not truly.  As the petite vixen sat in the central marketplace, watching the business around her, she noticed a pair of children playing on the outskirts, wrestling in the grass.  Siblings from their similar looks.  Suddenly, a frown overtook her often smiling face.

For even if she retained her playmate... It was hard to play with someone you couldn't touch.  The child failed to rectify that in her mind, brows beginning to crease.

Vox.  Vinny.  Oddly friendly newcomer, when thoughts pay a little extra attention.  Other matters typically took precedent however.  Hazel hues flashed, blinking in a somewhat dazed matter, the gears of her brain becoming stuck, struggling in vain to continue turning.  Uncertain, wheeling thoughts.

Gentle voice.  Soon he is accompanied by another.  Aine tilts her head up, gazing at her father for a moment, unblinking.  He had never confirmed nor denied her earliest assumptions of her mother and brother.  She felt oddly hesitant to question him.  Certainly, he would miss them too.

She bit the inside of her cheek, glancing once back towards the playing children.  Softly, she shuffled, dark paws over each other.  "'Toine an' I can't play... Like that, I mean." A relatively simple explanation.

No questions of fairness, or a great deal of complaint, simply... An admission of the facts.  Though they played, though he watched her back every venture... They could not scuffle on the ground like that or wrestle in the mud.  They used to.  Much to their parents' chagrin of course, ignoring all attempts to caution them from catching a cold in the rain.  But they used to.