Phoenix Maplewood I have never known hunger like these insects that feed on me

there came another, dark and sudden. bronze gazed matched the cool one evenly, found in them nothing sparking recognition. a woman, dark. not painted with night sky but rather the same charcoal that marred the plains, umbers and deep soil. no words were spoken, but meaning was clear in the woman's movements. there was a tightness in her chest at the stranger's prescence in the woods that had once been hers, and all she'd hoped and wanted. but she'd burned her title when she'd vanished into the north, and would not reclaim it. 

"to remember." her own gaze echoes the question back at the other, nares flaring once to catch her scent. they seem alike in their solitude, if nothing else; she catches no distinct pack-scent on the woman's fur. breath coils again before her nares as she regards quietly the stranger.