[SpringsSong]

Youko sighed as she looked around the unfamiliar environment, feeling entirely dwarfed by the caverns which she was in.  She did not quite know how she ended up here from where she had been, with her mother and father and Lucain-brothers in Idalani, but she knew one thing was certain.

She was lost.

"I told you we shouldn't have wandered too far off, Youko," a voice said sternly.  "You know how Father is about you wandering off and getting hurt.  He's not going to be happy when he realizes that we've wandered off and left the clan grounds."

This voice belonged to another Placid Paragon, who flicked her fur-tipped tail with a snap and looked to her sister with serious golden eyes.

"Yeah, well, you didn't need to follow me, Norah," Youko snapped, folding her wings against her body.  "You've had every opportunity to leap up into the air and fly away, but no, you decided to follow me into this bloody cavern where we can't fly.  You've had every opportunity to fly away and go back to Mother and Father, and yet, you stay with me."

The black-and-pale-green Placid gave a stern huff here.

"Yes, I could have left," she said.  "If I wanted Father to yell at me for letting you wander off."

[SpringsSong]

Youko sighed as she looked away from her sister.  "Yeah, well, Father needs to learn that I have a free spirit--freer than most would like to see in their daughter," she said.  "I can't be bound to one little spit of land, no matter how large it may be--considering we are members of a pack that is rather large.  I most certainly can't be bound not to go anywhere when he tells me stories of the ship that he served on!"

"The Trócaire?" Norah asked, and Youko nodded.

"Yes, the Trócaire--the ship that my namesake and our father were born on," Youko said.  "I want to experience the world... I want to go on adventures and see all the different sights that there are to see!  There's next to nothing special in Idalani," she said, and Norah sighed as she shook her head.

[SpringsSong]

"Well, there's that little rumor about the Lover's Triangle," Norah said, but Youko merely scoffed at this.

"Yes, but do either of us have a man in our lives right now, Norah?" the white-and-blue Placid asked, and her sister lowered her head as she shook it in slight dismay.

"No.  But that does not mean that we cannot go there and examine it for ourselves," she said, and the angelic-winged Placid laughed as she stretched her wings out as she turned to face Norah.

"Do you even realize where we are, Norah?" she asked.  "What is rumored to have happened here?  What is rumored to lie here, somewhere beneath the surface?"

"...should I?" the black Placid asked.

[SpringsSong]

"Yes.  Yes, you should recognize this place," Youko said, laughing.  "Even if only from the bedtime stories that Mother tells us from time to time about the war in which she fought, you should recognize this place... it is rather important to our family."

"Oh!  These... these must be the crystal caverns, right?" Norah asked, and Youko laughed again as she nodded slowly.

"Ah... so this is Craiss, then," she said after Youko nodded, feeling her sister's eyes boring into her.  She hated when her sister glared at her like that; like she ought to have known something.