Redsand Canyon "Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not."

@Stigmata !!

"Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."

She did not actively seek them. Yet, they lingered as lengthening shadows amidst the trees in the forest of her mind. 

Her forays from the Vale had become few and far between but still, something sent the ghost adrift in the seas of stone. Anxiety, though she would admit it to none, borne of the precarious situation they balanced upon with Diaspora.

Silently, she searched for signs of oncoming war.

The healer had yet to hear word of any answer regarding her request to confer with the guardian of Arrow Lake nor had she the slightest clue their thoughts of a potential alliance. Ruenna, Mahler, and Aurëwen were the only Diasporans she knew - she rather liked them, despite knowing that she should withdraw her emotions and hold them close to her chest.

Still, as the fae traversed mountains that the conqueror considered his own - she wondered. Liri could go nowhere without her dark eyes searching for a face unfamiliar but one she would surely know, if only by instinct. 

When the day dawned, cool and overcast, the healer slipped from the territory with only the serpent to accompany her. Nayethi had been absent for several weeks, assumedly laying a hatch of snakelets, but Leea had been overjoyed to find the silverscale sunning on a rock in her herb garden several morns before.

The duo would venture south as midday approached - drawn to the warmth of the unexplored Canyon she had yet to venture. On any other summer day, it would have been too much for the northron but the weather had been wet and chilled as of late. 

Gliding amidst the twisted and crumbled spires, the wraith was as out of place as her familiar would have been in the north - a pale spirit of winter and the cold amongst natural castles of sand and heat. 

The völva stuttered to a halt, dark gaze lifted to the red and purple streaked peaks of the mountains overhead with fascination, as Nayethi wound about her neck - testing the dry air with a flickering onyx tongue.