"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" She, like the tom in front of her, had never been approachable. Even during her time as Mage and then later as Shaman, she had been sharp-tongued at best and downright unpleasant at worst. She hadn't always been that way; she could remember a time when she wasn't as angry. A time before the trauma, before the moons of starving herself to nothing but bone. She had had it all originally; Satara Jacqueline was her mother, and being the warden's favorite child certainly had its perks. She had shaped up to have a similar potential that her mother did for great things, before it happened. Anyone who looked at her would immediately know what it was, or at least would have some sort of idea. After all, her front leg was broken and twisted, the wounds of that fateful day never healing. In just a flash, her life was destroyed. Any hope of being a hunter was dashed, and although she had quickly found a position within the medical team of the group, it wasn't the same. It made her cruel, even more cruel than even an ounce of Primal Instinct blood normally made a cat.

It had been nearly a year since Nyiradessa had stepped down from her position as Shaman and once again disappeared into the nothingness. This time, though, her return was significantly more worn. She had gotten thinner, and a small bump had emerged at the base of her neck, although few other than the cat herself would notice. There was a genetic component to cancer, and she'd always known that there were three options for her inevitable death: she would piss off the wrong cat and end up murdered; she would starve herself to nothing, the fate her mother had always worried about; or, if she managed to survive both herself and others, cancer would grow and spread in her body like wildfire. It was becoming obvious that it would be the third option. She faced death in no uncertain terms; even her years of medical experience could not save her from her own body. She felt no remorse for this, though; she had far outlived her own expectations, the lives of each of her family members, and she was comfortable with the idea that her own time was coming to a close.

Perhaps that was why she had come to Primal Instinct again. It had been clear in her time in the city that she had no real attachment to Primal Instinct outside of the forest in which she was born. It was an acceptable assumption to believe she would never be back; for a long time, she had never anticipated a return. Even now, though, the word "return" was perhaps an exaggeration. She had no interest in actually returning to residency in Primal Instinct. But, the word in the wind was that Primal Instinct had a particular specimen that was... different. She had made what very well could have been her last trip to the city because of this; if she was going to die soon anyways, she wanted one last medical examination.

"My name is Nyiradessa. I was the penultimate Shaman before the current." She didn't need to explain this to him, really, but perhaps it would save her skin if this masked tom was one of the more... physically aggressive. The now-elder had no real chance of surviving a fight

"I am here to determine the validity of a rumor," she meowed with a flick of her ear. "Lucky for me, it seems that I will not have to look hard. You must be Riven."