She tilted her head back, nostrils flaring as she scented the air.
The scent was familiar, but it was one she had not smelled for months. It was clean, but not what others might consider clean. There was an underlying smell of fresh earth, newly revealed after the melt of feet of snow.
She had spent enough time in the city to know that the smell of earth, no matter how it made her heart swell, would be offsetting to those who lived in the city.
But she was no longer one of them.
She turned her head to the northeast and let the wind breathe over her face. It played there, breaking over her nose, caressing her cheeks, tickling her ears and blowing back her hair.
The northern wind reddened her skin, a remnant of the long winter, but she did not care. She could smell a new scent on the wind, one that filled her at once with excitement and peace.
It was a scent she could never have described, but which she recognized instantly.
There was rain on the air.