Blackfeather Woods remember when you were young, you shone like the sun

set in the Weeping Meadow -- present-dated to March 18

The body was a strange thing, fallible and weak. For some reason, the gods had deemed it necessary to trap her in this one. This one, with its strange, curled foot. Its scrawny frame. But perhaps the wickedness of her mind deserved the body she'd received.

She was floating below herself, dragged down by the spores in the meadow and the poppy seeds she had ingested. Shapes danced before her eyes; the colors of the forest were at once both vivid and lifeless. Every word she spoke aloud seemed to drag out for an eternity--even the movement of her jaw felt grossly exaggerated.

Above all, though, a sense of numbness. An escape. Potema had tried to escape Maegi through the poppy seeds, and now Maegi was trying to escape herself.

She had messed up. Her brothers hated her. Even if she were to go and find them, they'd turn away from her--as she had turned away from them. Cicero probably hated her, too.

But no one could hate Maegi more than she hated Maegi. Perhaps not even Potema.

Everything she desired was nestled within the dark seeds of the poppy flower. When she lapped them up, she fled away, at once both sky-high and deep within the earth. And the hallucinations the willow tree provided--oh! how they bloomed in her mind. Euron's mismatched eyes, shining like gems before her. Ramsay's contented smile. Cicero's patchwork pelt.

In this world, the world of poppies and poison, she was still with them. She was cleansed, guilt leaving her in an odorous cloud. She was free, uninhibited.

But when the effects wore off, she was left tired and groggy and sick and sad. So terribly sad.

So she took more seeds, and inhaled more spores.