She gave a little smile back, but there was something sad in it. "The time of day isn't my biggest obstacle. The sun makes it quite easy. It's... past that, that I have issues. Weeks... that's often simple enough. Months... mmmm.... Years, though... decades?"

She sighed, looking back down as she leaned into the hug a little more again. "I wasn't able to keep track of a mere sixteen years reliably, and should have been more aware, and.... And I wasn't. And I'd intended to. I thought it had been fourteen, perhaps fifteen, but it hadn't. ....Or when I tried making friends among the humans... and then I went to find them again, and they were already... gone.

"And even here... there's been so much going on, so many things happening, and I've been focusing on things like looking for more paths, when I'm not making breakfast.... How much sooner could we have gotten to the Isle, if I'd had a better sense of urgency about it, and tried instead to organize us like that before? Are the animals all right, though we haven't reached them yet? I don't know how they've been kept, or how long they can manage on their own. I know humans often lock them up... what if we finally reach them, and they're...." She made a face, not finishing that sentence.