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Satu stood at the edge of the crowd, her glacial eyes narrowed. She had positioned herself off to the side, nearest to the closest exit path back down the mountain. Her frigid stare and her upright, stiff posture discouraged many from wandering too close - and if they happened to, when they met her eyes they skittered away as if they had been electrocuted. There was no particular heat in her gaze, but it was clear that she was not here to chat, so most moved on quickly.

She was watching a somewhat busy stall directly in front of her, which was providing herb bundles and tonics. She had been waiting here for a somewhat long time for the line to clear enough that she would not have to rub shoulders with the passerby in order to access it. The bustle of the crowd and the monotonous noise of voices was beginning to give her a headache. Funnily enough, an herb bundle for a headache was exactly why she was here. She had been feeling the weight of many miles of constant travel recently, mostly in her shoulders, neck, and head.

But now, that tonic would come in handy to help dull the pain from the incessant voices around her. She missed being alone. Her face was twisting into something akin to irritation now, but not quite there. She continued to part the crowd like a rock in the sea, and she waited.

""

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Kind as he was, Aph found assertion difficult. Like Satu, he occupied the edge of the crowd; unlike Satu, his expression was one of deep apprehension, oversized paws worrying into the ground as a result of his nerves. He had never been the most comfortable in congregations, especially when the density meant he needed to wedge his way through, but that just wouldn't do from the new Hand. How could he expect to serve his people if he was hesitant to even walk through them?

Thankfully, there appeared to be a break forming, wolves cast to either side in the wake of another. "Far be it from me t' miss an opportunity, eh Frik?" The hedgehog, who had been nibbling encouragingly on the end of a white hair, released what sounded like reproach. Aph pretended not to hear it and plodded behind the small but rugged woman, waiting patiently for her to complete her transaction before he was at last able to trade his own chit for the necessary aloe solution that kept him from withering in the bright Osthammar sunlight.

Task rendered successful, Aph hurried away before the throng could enclose him. He spied the woman from before and decided he might as well offer his gratitude, though it was unlikely she was even aware that she'd helped him. "I dunno if yeh've heard of 'im, but yeh reminded me of Moses," he said by way of awkward greeting. Noticing that her posture seemed intentionally aloof, he added, "Ehm, anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. I'm not too good with crowds myself. Yeh made it a lot easier to get by."

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The transaction itself was relatively painless, though she spoke as little as possible. She did not avoid eye contact, but stared rather heavily at the merchant as they fumbled with her chit. She had that effect on others, sometimes. Her expression was not curated for pleasure, or for people, really. Her face showed exactly what she was thinking, nearly at all times, and right now, she was irritable because of the line, irritable because of the people, and irritable over the twenty second transaction length. She finally retrieved her bundle and moved out of the queue, but pushing back through the throngs of people she had just parted proved more difficult than before.

She had only just extricated herself from the flow of traffic when a nearby voice caught her attention, clearly aimed towards her. "I dunno if yeh've heard of 'im, but yeh reminded me of Moses." She looked around, somewhat startled to be spoken to, to find a very large, very pale man looking earnestly at her. She blinked slowly, once, as she processed what he had said. Moses? She was not familiar. "Ehm, anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. I'm not too good with crowds myself. Yeh made it a lot easier to get by."

She considered this for a moment before she slowly dropped her herb bundle and turned more fully to face him, in a rare sign of intrigue. She could not say exactly why. Perhaps it was because he was so large, but looked so awkward. Maybe it was because there were heads turning towards him interestedly, and he carried a certain smell of authority about him that she could not quite place. Satu was not up-to-date on the happenings of her country, preferring to avoid politics and the masses of Osthammar, but she knew there had just been an election - she was not entirely under a rock. He spoke with a curious accent, one she had never heard before, and this, more than anything, piqued her interest.

"I do not know Moses," she said, her voice somewhat husky from lack of use, and deep. She stood with more gravitas than was earned from her medium stature, especially in the wake of his large shadow. She fixed her ice-bright stare upon him, the corner of her mouth turning down into a slight frown. "But you are welcome." She spoke with definition and purpose to every syllable. Each was earned, when it came to her. It was rare she expended this many words on another, or any amount of time, but she felt slightly magnetized by his unusually pale appearance and his strange accent. She had not expected to find anything interesting in her brief foray into humanity, but it seems she may have been wrong. "You are not native to Da'Ira," she said matter-of-factly, though this could be said of many wolves who came here.

""

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Despite their difference in height, it didn't appear that he was looking down at her. Aph regarded her with openness, watching carefully for signs that the intrusion on her privacy was no longer welcome. Her expression remained shuttered, if not somewhat disdainful by the frown beginning to form, yet her body language wasn't immediately hostile. He might even say she looked curious - beneath the frostbite, that is.

Of which Aph was marveling over when - I do not know Moses. Feeling rather presumptuous and hoping a gulf hadn't already grown between them for it, he coughed in an attempt to dislodge the knot of embarrassment in his throat, then tried his hardest not to avoid eye contact. "Ah, well, I may be the only one, t' tell yeh the truth. It's not the sorta thing they're jes teaching in class, y'know? I can tell yeh about 'im if yeh want, but it's not gonna change yer life or anything like that."

The shroud of perpetuity Rionnach endured for five frozen years had given its citizens ample time to pursue extracurricular interests. Some turned to crime while Adamh's back was turned. Others, like his pa, made meaningful contributions. Aph had been a student heading into his second year when the country as a whole destabilized and Saora collapsed, forcing him to study independently from that point on. He'd preferred it to the specificity of college, no longer burdened by the expectation to narrow his focus to a single specialty and able to devour whatever content he liked, which he did so ravenously. The Hardin men were known for their appetites. Grigori's for justice; Arythmetik's for equality; Peri's for adventure; and Aph's for... them all and more. Honor, peace, knowledge, joy - he wanted things to be as they could appear in storybooks but was realistic enough to know he needed to pioneer the changes necessary to make that a worldwide reality.

Hence why he'd felt it pertinent to settle in Da'Ira and take up a mantle in its governance early on, so what he learned from these people—his people, he reminded himself proudly—could further shape his behavior.

To that end, he wasn't surprised by her correct assumption that he was an immigrant. "I'm not," Aph conceded gladly. "My brothers (Kahru had become like a second sibling throughout the last several years), Frik, and I come from Rionnach. Have yeh lived here yer whole life?" She looked like she was carved out of the weathered rock that formed Halmstad's mountains, but Aph didn't want to be hasty in making assumptions of his own. Friction chittered as he heard himself named but that was the only indication the hedgehog was there; Satu's forbidding stare made him wary to leave the safety of his furry harbor.

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The man seemed immediately uncomfortable. She noted this, and felt a small pang of curiosity again. He was so large, to be so uncertain. "Ah, well, I may be the only one, t' tell yeh the truth. It's not the sorta thing they're jes teaching in class, y'know? I can tell yeh about 'im if yeh want, but it's not gonna change yer life or anything like that." She blinked at the candor in his tone, and the embarrassment. "Alright then," she said.

"I'm not. My brothers, Frik, and I come from Rionnach. Have yeh lived here yer whole life?" Ah. Rionnach. Finally, a second source to confirm what she had been hearing in her travels - and perhaps the best source there was. She noted that name carefully, and then dwelled upon the other. The man spoke of this "Frik" as if in relation to someone with them, but aside from a slightly woodsy chitter, Satu could see no one else. Her eyes unabashedly scaled over the man's broad appearance. "Frik?" she asked, returning her gaze to him.

A moment later, she answered his question. "I have." It was still all that she'd ever known, though she had wanted, more and more, to explore the lands around them as she had gotten older. "My brother is here, as well." They both had brothers. That was something in common, then, though she did not need that to feel comfortable. Her eyes narrowed on him slightly, and she finally voiced what she had been suspecting since they first started speaking. "You are the new Hand." She tilted her head slightly, wondering why he had not come out and said it right away, but his admission to being from Rionnach -- and the clear, slightly bug-eyed stares he'd been getting from market patrons since the beginning, gave her enough hypothesis to arrive at conclusion. Everything else about him, though, pointed away from him being in such a position. So, why was he?

""

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