That brisk walk is more manageable, keeping them to a pace where they can follow that faint trail without entirely tromping all over the tracks and risking muddying it up with their own footsteps. Like Winnie the Pooh, she thinks, vaguely, even as she knows that her mindset is drifting. Searching for something to latch onto.

Past occasions of hiking across this island had been-- not leisurely, exactly, but they hadn't had a firm and important goal like this. Back then Brigitte hadn't had that urgent drumbeat of someone to rescue on the other end, the siren call of villagers taken. It leaves her wired and ready for a fight. When gathering in the village, she'd watched Maine getting ready and considered what might happen to him if he barreled into this utterly alone, and that had made up her mind and resolve to go, if nothing else. He could take care of himself, but there's something to that lack of caution. A bull in a china shop.

"You're going to give yourself a heart attack before we even get there," she says, voice gentler this time. Not a literal warning -- but a reminder, to not to spend up all his energy before they even get to their destination, wherever there is. Who even knows how far away they might be?