Dawnlark Plains in the blink of an eye

she was empty. it was as if grief had burned in her like a fire when she'd pushed it down, and when she'd sang it into the night, she too had sang out all the ash of it and everything else. but like the smallest tendrils of green after a forest fire, already did she begin to rebuild, to find solace in Aditya. stil, it took her a moment to reply, for those strands to unfi=url their leaves and deepen their roots. 

"no."  her voice was coarse and raspy, sounding alien even to her own ears. she tried again, but it made no difference, the sound whittled down by the events of last night. she blinked her gaze open, staring somewhere off into the distance. "I don't know - how."  her tone made it apparent that she spoke not of sleep, but of how she would go on. 

their ranks were consumed by grief, with three mothers, fading hunters, and a yawning empty void where her father had stood. her trip with Adi suddenly seemed so frivolous, so wrong, and the future yawned, as big a void as her father's passing.