Herbalists' Cache Before we packed our bags and left all this behind

Tags for reference! She won't be "missing" for long probably.

After her run-in with @Khali the Betrayer (and after she'd gotten nice and dry following a good soaking in a pond), the girl had retreated to the safety of the communal caves where she could dry off and get warm again. Every time someone came wandering by the cave mouth, or dipped in to the system to say hello to her, she would only grumble at them; eventually even that grew stale, and Ibis flatly ignored any attention that her presence earned. She didn't feel like talking to anybody. Even when her brother @Okeanos popped in to check on her she was resolute in her unhappiness, going so far as to shove him away when he tried to squish up against her - sharing warmth maybe, or trying to be a comfort in the only way he knew how - and she refused even that. The girl was hurting. Her body soon warmed up though, and as the chill and the wetness vanished from her lithe little body her mood stabilized.

A couple of hours passed. They were spent alone in the cave, as she had alienated everyone by this point. Her mother must have been occupied with some other task because Ibis did not see @Seabreeze - or her other mother @Olive - for that entire span of time; not that she wanted to see them. They'd been the ones that brought change to her little world and Ibis had concluded that she loathed the concept. If she went to either of her mothers for help, they wouldn't fix anything. She wanted her father and Khali's trick had only reignited the embers of her sorrow over him. Whatever limited composure she'd worked herself in to had become fragile in that moment. She could still taste the warm tears, hear the echo of her own wailing voice through the willows. Ibis had wept openly — and the willows, with their bent heads, began to represent that sensation for her.

She hated it here, she decided.

So the girl got to her feet and abandoned the cave. Ibis was no adventurer - and even if she was, she'd have brought an adult or maybe Okeanos for company - and yet she found an easy path along the territory's eastern edge and scrambled along it, filled with her tumultuous emotions. There was rage within her, and sadness, and wanting, but no room for fear as she climbed along the nearby ridge — heading south until the ridge evened out. Ibis didn't want to be tricked again, didn't want to look at the sad trees anymore, didn't even want to play with her little skull friend she had found — she wanted her father, and if she had to hunt him down herself, that's exactly what she would do.

***

By nightfall she had realized her stupidity, but there was a new flare of anger to accompany it. Ibis was furious with herself for being so easily manipulated by her own emotions - perhaps not in those terms, and not in any discernable sense that would occur to a child of her age no matter how precocious - but she was frustrated that her adventure would be so easily spoiled with the early darkness of the season, and that god awful chill that descended through the trees. She had thought to turn back on more than one occasion but she was in the thick of it now, lost among the trees and unsure of where to turn. Ibis would go a few steps before a sound would startle her, or a shifting shadow. 

Soon enough the girl was so very lost, and so very cold. It made more sense to stay in one place and warm herself up - she's reminded of the cave she had emotionally abandoned, of her brother's love and warmth, of mommy and mother olly, and even the enviously pretty plush coat of Eleuthera — but none of them were here because she had been so mean to them! So mean, so rude, and so stupid! Ibis gasped as her brain spat out another little thought: They'll never come to you, her doubt said, you're too mean, they hate you! They hate you just like daddy hates you!

As she sank sadly in to a gully of ferns, she let out a pitiful little sound - a small cry, tempered by her fear and by the low chattering of her teeth - and felt the familiar warmth of tears along her lash line.