Lake Rodney I was dead when I woke up this morning

How long had it been since Ven had left his parents' woodland? How long since he found a place for himself, free of their rules and their reign, alongside Maegi and her Blackfeather wolves? A while, he suspected, and the young Melonii stepped carefully from the place that's become his home for the first time since his arrival.

He was anxious, in part because he felt oddly vulnerable to be out in the open after months of dwelling in darkness but mostly because he didn't particularly want to cross paths with a former comrade. He would have to be careful, considering his intended destination.

Venamis carried on through lands of grey and crimson, driven by curiosity to investigate how his abandoned family fared through the world's trembles and tremors. He wondered darkly if any trees had fallen on either of his sisters like the one that almost crushed him.

Inexperience took him far beyond the forest he planned to scout, and last creature he expected to see as he trailed along an unfamiliar lake was Hela. The raven youth paused to observe her as she prodded at the water's edge, an obsidian ear cupped forward as he waited to be seen.