Blackfeather Woods and stole my heart away complete

it was a good thing astara was unaware of the black mark she was incurring, desecrating the sacred face of some old god's shrine. gods had a way of being mercilessly powerful -- and incredibly unforgiving -- so, either these gods were the kind of revengeful twats that would scheme some asshole plan to smite her when she thought she was safe, or, these weren't gods at all.

astara of course, would have gone for the latter - the atheist option would have appealed to the hellraiser, if she was ever introduced to the concept. right now the only concept she was aware of, was that she had a skull -- a giant, massive skull -- and it was a skull her dam had implied was important.

cackling shrilly, the girl didn't stop as she heard her mother's disapproving tread behind her; even the way relmyna's paws crunched over leaves seemed to portend to some nuanced resignation on the mother's part -- why was her child such a fruitbat?

the world would, evidently, never know -- and neither would the skull, which this entire time had been half-dragged on the ground with loud thumps echoing behind it each stride, enduring its humiliating and unprecedented journey with the obscene grin one expected from a deskinned skull ; thump, thump, thump, went the bobbing motion of the skull's nasal bone against dirt; thump, scrape, thump, as the black and sightless orbit stared skyward, hauled in defilement to some unknown designation by a witless kid.