Witch's Marsh my love, i treasure you.

@Merrit

Ibis marched in a fog from place to place; she did not see the beautiful forest at the foot of the mountains, did not complain as she took to picking her way through the wetlands further on. Not a sound passed her lips as she went; she wasn't aware if @Okeanos followed her or if @Ereshkigal had ever returned, and merely kept on moving. Her desire to explore was exacerbated by the deep pangs of lonliness and loss she felt, and it felt as if no amount of distance would save her from the heartbreak she had so recently experienced. A part of her wanted to be as far from the willows as possible; maybe she thought she'd encounter someone familiar, or the path of her mothers, or some sort of clarity that would ease the pain inside of her; it was very possible the ache would never abate, and she was loath to think such a thing. She did not want to become a surly, bitter, hateful creature like the disenfranchised Mal — and in thinking of the boy and the promise she was adamantly breaking by refusing to go back to Neverwinter, Ibis' pace increased.

She toiled until the marsh was all around her. The air was rich with herbal fragrance, and the late hour didn't feel so dim or dark as the light reflected off a myriad of still water, which she drifted by with a shy glance or an inquisitive dip of her nose. At one point the smell of the water was more inticing than anything; it was tannic, almost. All manner of plant life lived throughout the bogged area but the water was full of it too, and the dead pieces steeped at the bottom of the silt-heavy ponds. Ibis gave a careful lick of the surface of one small pond and recoiled immedately. A line of green slime hung from her chin and she shook her face to be rid of it, watching the shape slip free and audibly plop back in to the water.

For a few moments her revulsion was so strong that Ibis forgot about the rest of her issues. She didn't think about Elysium and was more concerned with ridding the sage-rich taste of the pond scum from her tongue, and ran the pink muscle across the tip of her snout as if to graze the texture of the slime away using her leathery nose. It is at this point that Ibis notices a chill in the air to which she was oblivious before; the sky is dark with streaks of grey, and there is a brisk wind flowing from the north, cutting through the sour scent of the bog with a crisp, clean, wintergreen aroma. She looks heavenward but doesn't see anything too concerning, not realizing that the tendrils of winter were already seeding themselves.