Ravensblood Forest embodied in a cradle of absence

backdated to earlier in september; open for anyone

He wandered for what felt like days along the coast, hoping for some trace of Larkspur to emerge there. And though he had every inclination to go marching back towards the borders of the creatures rightfully guilty of his newest calamity, Mordecai was far from being in any condition to contend with them. Battered and weary, he simply lacked the strength to go on some crusade, let alone one that would have been suicidal at best. He'd almost met his end with them once before, and didn't favor another go off their cliffs to watery depths again.

So instead of anger coming over him like a sanguine fog, he sank towards a sorrow he had hoped to never encounter. It seemed to him that there had been little hope that Larkspur had survived the plummet into the waters. After all, he had been left disoriented for who knew how long. Now he found himself moving on, back towards the Keep with profound defeat and a pronounced limp as his proverbial prize tokens for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He hadn't a clue what he would tell Harlyn, let alone how long it would take him to make the trek back along the winding pathways that led discreetly towards the swath of land that held the willows. He had no idea that Larkspur had in fact survived and would have her own tale to tell. Surely all of that would come in time but for now he was left to cover the ground of a forest he had only skirted through on rare occasion, and from a long time ago at that.

agalloch — "birth and death of the pillars of creation"