Cedar Sweep Say something awful

vaguely vague for @Ethos but backdated before she met the wolves of Darkness Ridge

The forest was not her own - the serenity of the place unnerved her and the cheerful openness of it felt alien. She longed for the dark, ominous heath of overgrown trees.

That forest, her forest, was but a skeleton of the home she had known. Black bones littered the ground, Puyule's bones and Hecate's and Näkki's and everyone she'd ever known, and ash was blown in the wind like a macabre snow. 

Despite herself, she had taken up a hermit's life on beyond the edges of the forest, and early morning found her in the center of the woods having roamed back that morning. The clearing was nearly perfectly circular and couldn't have been more than a few paces across. Trees encircled it but by looking upwards a circle of blue sky could be seen and occasionally a bird soaring overhead.

Pixie's altar gave off an air of temporarily being used - nothing more than a broken section of a rotten log placed in the heart of the fairyring. The altar itself was not so important, the gods would understand if she had nothing better to use while she was here, it was the things she had gathered for their honor that were most important.

Several trinkets and fixings lay atop the table - colorful stones found at the waters edge and intriguing feathers, the skulls of small animals and the hollow bones of birds, even a dry, scaly snakeskin. They appeared to be arranged atop the stained log in a grouping that made sense only to the witch's keen eye and in the center of her intricate design - the body of a songbird.

It lay small and broken on its back, an evident twist to its neck, its wings outstretched as if in flight and its leg pointed stiffly out. Its beady eyes stared glassily at the bitch as she smoothed one of its bright yellow feathers lovingly. 

Whispering soft, dark words beneath her breath, the witch kept mismatched eyes locked on the corpse as she murmured before falling silent. Seeming dazed, she dipped her head so as to reach a point on her shoulder - already scarred with much use - and savagely bit into it. 

Bleeding, she held the wound over the bird until its sunshiney feathers had been splashed generously with black. Licking the wound clean with a pleasured shudder - she finished arranging her herbs of lavender and left her altar behind her in favor of finding sustenance for herself.