Tormented Tarns i. 'all the world will be your enemy'

There was no discernable change from the wilderness beyond Teekon to the southern borders of the Sunspire, the peaks of the range rose on the horizon as jagged and broken teeth biting deeply into the sky; the woman had turned west long ago with the fear that the Chinooks would somehow manage to track her south even with all those miles between them. Nowhere felt far enough, safe enough. 

Though this might have been chalked up to trauma. 

She could not look back on it, allow herself to dwell on the festering wounds within, lest she fall apart - to do so would surely mean death and Cäidori intended not only to survive the Chinooks but spite them. 

You thought you could beat the lightning out of me, that I would become meek and breakable - who lied to you, told you you had that power? 

I will live, as will you, knowing that a slip of a half-breed brought down your best warriors with a few bits of plants. 

Gods did that knowledge feel good, emboldened her. A rare, prideful smirk graced her scarred muzzle, a chuckle slipped from her lips. She cast a daring golden gaze to the north, filled to the brim with an undescribable notion - that she could go anywhere, be anyone, survive anything. 

With the sensation of taking wing, Cäidori turned her back on the horror that was Chinook and broke into a free gallop - at.woo flapping and clacking in the wind as her paws tore through mud, weaved between pools of water. 

A bubble of laughter rose in her throat, muffled by the qiigam aygaaxsii she held in her jaws protectively, burbling around the basket to bounce off the trees joyously.