Ma'ar tries to come up with variations on the word-game to pass the time for Azabel, but seems very preoccupied. 

"What'cha thinking about?"

"- What? Oh." He rubs his eyes. "Wondering if my people will even recognize me, I guess. Or - be happy that I came back. Or if they'll think I'm not one of them anymore." 

"You haven't been gone that long."

"More than two years. That's - a long time, out here. And I look different." He's grown, no longer scrawny and undernourished. 

"That's true but like, if you introduce yourself you don't look like a whole different person."

"That's true. It'll probably be all right, and - even if not it's still worth having come." 

The second part in particular seems reassuring to him. He keeps walking, and is more attentive to the game. 

And eventually they get close enough to see a smudge of something on the horizon. A little ways further it resolves into the humped-peaked shapes of tents. 

"Are the tents marked or anything?"

"No, but they'll see us and come out to see what we want soon." 

In fact, very soon after, distant figures detach from the tent cluster and start heading their way, kicking up dust. 

"...Sshould I hide now? Or fly away?" 

Ma'ar glances at Azabel. "Maybe I can just cover you with an illusion, and then see if we can explain to them?" 

"Let's make him look like a donkey instead of like nothing, feels weird to make him look like nothing."

"Oh, that's easier too." Ma'ar does this, and then stands very still and waits, anxiously. 

The figures approach. In front are two boys of maybe eight or ten, wielding sharpened sticks. They're flanking a woman, whose white hair and wrinkled, weathered skin makes her look very old and frail; despite that, she moves briskly enough. 

She stops ten yards away, shades her eyes and glares at them and snaps a phrase in the the Predain tongue. 

Ma'ar opens his mouth, but seems to be having trouble actually getting as far as speaking. 

:Ma'ar you have to talk to her or translate we can't just stare at her - if I have to Mindspeak her she might freak out if Gifts are rare here:

:I know:

He takes a deep breath, and answers her in the same language. "It's me. Ma'ar." 

The woman goes very still for a long moment. 

- and then she crosses the yards between them, and whacks him with the stick she's been using to walk. "Kiyamvir Ma'ar, you, I cannot believe..." This trails off into a lot of foreign swearwords. 

:It's all right: Ma'ar tries to reassure Azabel, weakly. :She's not - really mad...: 

Aza flinches really hard when she strikes him but manages not to do anything rash.

She runs out of steam after a minute or so, and backs off; she doesn't move to hug him, and isn't really smiling, but she doesn't in fact seem angry anymore. 

Ma'ar, holding himself stiffly, says something else in his native tongue, ending in Azabel's name, then turns back to her. "Aza, this is my - grandmother, I guess, also the... I'm not sure exactly how to translate it. The elder woman of the clan, I guess. Her name is Ta'ana." 

"Hello, Ta'ana, it's nice to meet you," says Aza, hoping she sounds polite enough that it'll come across. Grandmother he guesses, what does that mean.

The woman jerks her chin impatiently at Ma'ar and barks something else. 

"She's inviting us to come to the camp and sit down," Ma'ar translates. Approximately. In fact what she said was significantly less polite than that.