The Heartwood this will never end

ash settles low as the last of the daylight stretches thin, the scent sharp and acrid. the sun is a pale shadow on the horizon, and the waning light it does give off flickers oddly over the autumn foliage. 

leaves crunch underfoot as the wraith pauses, crown tilting back as she surveys the blurred horizon. it is as if some great god had stolen earth from the land below and smeared it across the skyline, obscuring the sharp edges of the mountains that rise in the distance. she means to move parallel to them, understanding that the source of the disruption lays somewhere beyond them and knowing enough to avoid it, for now. 

tongue passes over her lips, maw dry and touched with a bitterness she supposes stems from the ash. she has no name for it, but she does not both with the unknowable; not when hunger is her unforgiving companion.