Golden Glade the escape

Open! Lightly referencing her NPC husband.

She'd done it; it went against every fiber of her being, every inch of her screaming and fighting the panic of her strides, but she'd left him. Perhaps it would only lead to a worse beating when he caught up with her. Maybe he'd go so far in to his depths of rage, and he'd kill her. There was relief in that thought; a solace that she felt guilty for taking. But the woman darted from shadow to shadow, following the curve of the foreign ridge as she fought against the twists and turns of the thicket — her breath burning in her lungs and the cold air whipping at her face. She thought when she emerged from the darkness she would feel free. Liberated. But instead she only felt a strong dread for what was to come if she stopped. The wind was slicing at her face so sharply that she thought, 'There will be a trail to follow, and he will find it, and find me,' but she dared not look back. Camilla knew she had to keep moving. She forced herself to hold the desperate pace across the open expanse between forests, and as she fled in to the adjacent glade she felt the sharp stinging of her overworked muscles.

She paused for one moment, to catch her breath. Her head hanging so low she could taste the dirt with every inhalation and thought, 'I am preparing for my own death,' and wondered if he would bury her before or after tearing her body apart. Then there was a sound — a portent — as her husband's voice rose through the dark and twisting routes behind her, an eerie summons that chilled her to the bone for its emptiness.

Camilla sucked in a breath and veered off again, charging through the trees.

By morning she was in a state of hypervigilance; his call did not come again. She had not slept. Her body ached from the extended time spent awake - beyond the running, which obviously tired her and worked muscles that had not been used in many days, she had been awake through the entire night as her fear persisted. Now, loitering in the long shadow of the plateau's western ridge, she took the time to rest. Sleep did not come but she coiled herself so tightly and awkwardly against some tree roots that she could, at the very least, rest her legs. Camilla kept her snout buried in her sparse tail so that her breath would not betray her; the scant light which penetrated the woods did not dapple her with any discernable patterns yet, but when the shadows inevitably began to shift with the movement of the sun, she hoped that she would still be well hidden.