Dragoncrest Cliffs the first casualty of war is innocence

maybe a wild @Bobby? — but only if you want/have time! ♥ otherwise, open for anyone. ehm, disclaimer her mood swings are pretty wild right now and she may bite, haha.

it was frigid outside of hougeda ...even though it was about mid-afternoon. the chilling wind, salty and filled with droplets as the water churns below nips at blodreina as she stands at the cliff's edge. she's peered over it once and after a case of vertigo she took a couple of steps back into the safety zone of where she wasn't at risk of losing her balance. part of her wants to avoid the cliffs at all costs. they are where the commander presumably took her own life, after all. or perhaps it was a casualty and she fell ...but there were no signs of struggle to suggest that she'd tried to keep herself from plummeting into the sea and rocks below.

blodreina wants to hate these cliffs, to hate this territory. it's taken so much from her. kendra. and not antumbra. but it is home even though she struggles, without antumbra ...without their heda to see any place as home. home was supposed to be a safe haven and if all it brought with it was the shattered pieces of her cold and blackened heart then what good was it? she plops down on her huanches and stares blankly out at the sea. she'd already frantically searched the waters below ( though from up high it wasn't like she expected to see much ) for any sign of their fallen commander. holding out fragile and useless hope that maybe blixen was wrong. antumbra was drageda. she was the kongeda. without her ...without a commander they were just ...what? drifters. a kru in a very fragile place? at least, this was how blodriena felt.

heda, blodreina's voice is thick with emotion as she mourns in her own way, away from the prying eyes of the drakru. i ...i feel so lost. the woman that blodreina'd admired so fiercely was gone. heda was supposed to be unmovable, a fixture to their home and their culture and the realization that she could die hadn't really occurred to blodriena. maybe once, fleetingly, when she'd been ill and blodriena'd been temporary fleimkepa but the spirits of the commander's had kept her alive.

and then as if mourning her mentor wasn't bad enough there was that ugly flare up of jealousy she felt whenever she scented aure. blodreina wrote it off as being a byproduct of the season because ...it had to be. it wasn't as if blodreina herself actually had a maternal bone in her body but she a newcomer carried a new generation of drakru in her womb caused civil unrest within the gona; and it only makes blodreina's choice to sleep away from hougeda all that more resolute.

she suffers through it with indignation for the time being because she runs the risk of dying of hypothermia otherwise but when it warmed up enough she would return to her ever changing hidey-hole of slumber away from the others. caves made her skin crawl and the rock walls and ceiling always felt like it was closing in on her, threatening to suffocate her. add that to the emotional rollercoaster from hell the season coupled now with the death of her mentor and commander put her on — a ride that she can't wait to get the fuck off of thankyouverymuch — and you have blodreina:

the saltiest of salty bitches.