Alea had been pacing back and forth for a few chimes, wondering how long Banir was going to be, and imagining every possible terrible outcome that could possibly occur in her absence, only some of them winding up with Banir on the losing end. Then, finally she heard him calling her name. She darted toward the sound of his voice.
She did not call back to him, and when she saw him, she did not speak. She seemed to have forgotten that she could. She found herself slipping back into patterns from long ago, just after the storm that shook Mizahar, when she had lost her ability to speak, and (despite being rather quite abandoned by Yuros) felt strangely closer to her bondmate than ever.
It was such a bizarre feeling, when Banir came into sight with the wolf. Both were utterly blood-soaked. The corpse was a mess, its face so destroyed that Alea could not even find its head. Her mind split in two at the sight. One fragment of her could only feel that it was right and good that a predator, one who was dangerous to her and her friends, was removed from the forest.
But the other... the other felt as Alea had felt when she ran from the scene. Banir, her friend, was capable, not just of this gory destruction, but was actually capable of ending a life. And a life had been ended this very day. A life, that might have continued, had Alea not chosen to drag Banir into the woods. Alea had spent some time among the Frostfawns of Avanthal, and she valued the lives of animals at least as much as those of sentient races, if not more. It was... beyond unsettling to see the corpse of a creature that, moments ago, had been alive. A creature that she'd had time to worry about.
The death of the wolf might have hit her harder if it had not been for that other part of her, the stag-like part. This part of her rose to the surface, her real self unable to know how to cope with the reality of the death she was witnessing. Her eyes darted around, much like those of a doe, remaining ever alert against the physical threats of the forest, without having to worrying about threats of a more subtle nature. She acknowledged Banir with a tick of eye-contact, but beyond that, she merely waited for him to make the next move.