The Bracken Woods most of us are heavin' through corrupted lungs

she'd thought she'd reached the worst of all she could be in the summer. she did not think that she could fall much further until she did, and found herself alone in an icey plain far north of here, laying still and hoping the cold would reach into her bones and freeze her where she lay, that death would come slowly. and when it did not, something had to give.  

now she stood at the edge of the lands she'd left all those months ago, still and poised at the edge of the trees. her self imposed solitude had kept her lean and slowed the healing of the ugly burns up her forelimbs, but it had too given her the strength to find some semblance of meaning in the bonds she'd made. stark contrast to the prideful leader was she now, and she would not seek again that post - not after what she'd done, but more importantly, what she'd failed to do. duty became her new armour, resigned and heavy and so unlike that fierce pride that had burned hotly through her youth. that had burned out as swiftly as the fires that had consumed their home. 

gaze turned toward the sun that rose hazily behind a flurry of snow and veil of cloudcover, bringing trepidant light to the spindly canopy that reached above. she stepped carefully out from the cover of the trees, thinking a moment of Alarian and what had once stood here. she would have liked to know how he fared. the huntress no longer struggled to bear all her sins. they lay across her shoulders, where vows and debts that whispered of repair and repament held them there. she'd come to terms with the fact that no amount of self-imposed suffering, fevered promises or heated words could rectify them, provide the perfect couter to lift them airly far away from her. she'd lay with them and them with her, and like grief, perhaps time would erode away their heaviness. perhaps not.

she headed south.