When Isolde reached the general area of one of the signals, she only had to follow a thin trail of smoke curling into the sky. It had dissipated by the time she reached the source -- a collapsed entrance to some sort of bunker or lab beneath the sands of Issiq, broken machinery and useless technology scattered around it. Whoever worked there had left in a hurry, leaving debris everywhere behind. 

There was a single tsabhua standing nearby, blinking bewilderedly and shielding her eyes from the harsh sun’s glare. Isolde approached carefully.

The stranger -- Ailell, as she introduced herself -- had no memory of the past few years or how she had gotten there, knowing only that she had staggered out of the lab amid chaos and confusion and been stunned by the light after so long below ground, presumably. While she looked to be Isolde’s age, Ailell had the telltale grey flecking in her mane and around her muzzle of one either elderly, or who had experienced something deeply stressful. 

Isolde offered her companionship. Ailell, not having anywhere to call home, accepted.

On the way home, it became clear that Ailell’s amnesia didn’t only extend to the last few years -- or her time in whatever centre she was in. She could recall childhood with the same accuracy as Isolde, but new memories often fell out of her mind.

She took to making notes of anything important in a datapad she carried everywhere, instead.

And, forgotten in the commotion of bringing the abandoned tsabhua home, a datapad buzzed to life in the desert.

“h-”

And shut off.