WILL IT EVER COME BACK // JOINING?

[Mama]

[align=center][div style="width:400px; font-size:8pt;line-height:1.1;color:#000;font-family:arial;margin-top:3px;margin-bottom:3px;letter-spacing:0px;margin-left:0px;text-align:justify;"]Though their lives had found different paths both had been contained to tents. She had been nothing more than a solider for the first few years of her life, had found the copper tang of blood too often upon her tongue, be it from a lip split as a back handed slap had come when least expected or that of her fellows, driven to kill for the pleasure of others. A plaything to them was all she had been, a toy to be paraded about until she had simply snapped one day, had dared to lash out at them as they had at her every day of her life.

Too quickly had she learnt the harsh lesson life was not touched by rainbows and butterflies for beneath the harsh desert sun she was made a weapon within their claws until she was able to drag herself away, given a second chance within the heat of a forge. It was a hard road to walk, one which leaves scars deep upon soul and mind alike, but it had seemed better than the life she had been forced into once, given no choice even to be herself, called a name which had never fit and deemed a boy for it what they saw.

It had been around a week since she had found this place, had tread upon the beach with no purpose but had found within an odd creature a friend and the offer of something more, yet still it lacked something, her heart longing for the desert heat. For a time she found enjoyment in a forge of her own making, buried within the mountains to be of no harm to any others but quickly Ishayu had grown restless, found a want to move for the craft held little when those she had once learnt from and beside were no more.

Upon the wind voices rose and slowly so did her head, lifting from where she had rested it upon the surface of a cool stone, curious for it seemed Stella was always the first to each new person as though she were drawn to them. Or might it be she had some magnet within her, calling to the lost no matter where they hide, drawing them in until she might confront them. Bracing herself against the rock the albino cougar was slow to lift herself, lips parting with a hiss as she pressed too hard upon the stone with her stump. Her own progress towards the lion was much slower though she seemed to have been somewhat lucky, the stranger silent within the wake of the other bearer's questions, and so she waited, deciding to stay back some, a bystander this time.