Honeyed Pasture she got me going crazy

“Forest” is such a pretty word. [burrows into]

Szymon’s tattered ears slicked back against his narrow skull at the unpleasant, catlike hiss that fell from the woman’s lips. He looked at her as befit his status as a battle-hardened warrior, his golden eyes stripping the fur from her flesh to take careful stock of the musculature that cloaked her tall, long-legged framework. She looked innocuous enough, but he knew from firsthand experience that appearances could be deceiving. Still, he surmised from the raw emotion that broke fissures in her cool tone and the need for her to wish Deirdre goodbye that the decree of her exile was new — and, recalling Skellige’s banishment, could not harden his heart against her.

Szymon, gentlest of the Cairn children, could not find it within himself to condemn the woman. Though he understood the leader’s reason for exiling her — threats of any kind must be eradicated, after all — he regretted that she was being forced out in such a vulnerable state. Too, he did not wish for Deirdre to feel sorrow or pain, which she inevitably would at the sudden parting. He cast about for something to say but came up repeatedly with nothing; his mouth was filled with the sand and ash of futile platitudes that would splinter his wooden tongue. Turning his gaze toward Donnelaith and then back to the gray-eyed female, “Where w-will you g-g-go?” he asked baldly. “If you n-need an escort, I will k-k-kill for you.” His bass timbre was devoid of its former ire and the promise of death was spoken with little to no inflection. Killing was the tried and true Cairn solution to most problems.