Bramblepoint my sweet torment

Hope you don't mind me!

Ana burned with restless thoughts of her own — but they were far removed from things such as romance or springtime dreams. She needed to go back. Back to the sea. Back to where it began.

Increasingly she felt that there was no meaning to her existence; no purpose in it. Abandoned by God. Abandoned by her own mother. Abandoned now by Ponyboy, too, who had brought her to Brecheliant only to leave her to — to rot! Alone!

She often watched the horizon and wondered if she would find more meaning among the waves. Ana missed the sound of the sea, the smell of it. She missed her parents. Her littermates. And now, today, as she wandered through the forest, she thought of her older siblings. Her not-siblings. Judah. Simeon. Dinah. Even Malakai and his disdain.

Anathema almost didn't notice the boy at the water's edge. The sight of him startled her to a halt. For a long moment all she could do was stare at him. But then her anxiety found her, and she couldn't help but click a few times into the relative silence.