More travelling; once the neonate Wardens had emerged from the hall, Amaranthine's lull of pregnant silence had exploded into whirlwinds of activity, and swept up in the storm of it, Hilda had essentially been conscripted for one of the first groups to leave Vigil's Keep. She had scarcely had the time to bid farewell to Ordhan and Conlan before the party was covered with dust from the road, and as they had travelled Hilda had kept a marching-pace in low-chanted poetry, cheerful but wide-eyed, her bow on her shoulder, cloak skirling around her calves. When camp had been declared, she had made herself busy everywhere, loaning her shoulders and strong back to setting up tents, gathering firewood, clearing brush, all with a smile on her face that said the simple pleasure of work was one she was not a stranger to.
And then the red-bearded one that reminded her of Gunnarr - Ser Talfryn, she believed his name was, though they had hardly been formally introduced - had led a party out into the forest to hunt, and Hilda longed to go with them. But though she yearned to run the forest as she had the snow-capped steppes, Talfryn and his colleagues did not know her, could not yet trust her arrows to find the centers of their backs. And that was alright with Hilda, because trust was a thing to be earned, and the only person among the camp she was even vaguely familiar with was the warrior-woman who had lingered near Cormac, and the dark-eyed mage who had made such odd comments at the bonfire.
And Templar Demarc, who had promised her a thorough explanation on what a Templar was, that Hilda fully intended to collect upon, as soon as she could corner him long enough to do so.
So, to the campfire she went instead, to the brooding young man and his Mabari, a different specimen than Shartan - a bitch, Hilda suspected - and the blonde child-thing that was tiny and fascinating yet apparently fully-grown. Hilda had never seen a dwarf up close, outside of her own imagination colouring the tales she told, and though she had snuck curious glances Signy's way throughout the march, the skald had yet to find a properly polite way to ask all the questions that threatened to burst from her mouth. Instead, she sat down between Signy and Noa, stretching her long legs before her, unhooking her cloak and bow, to wrap the first around the second. "Guten abend," she smiled, addressing first Signy, then Coan and Noa. "Are hyu writing letters? I vould borrow pen und paper, eef hyu haff spares. In all der commotion, I haff qvite forgotten to write mein mentor und family, to tell dem of vere dees jorny has tekken me."