The Heartwood this will never end

Specter of old life, old love;
she must cast out her sorrows, yes—
her wolves must not know her tears;
they must not know how

phayanāro had drowned in the waters

y  e  s      t h e y      h a d      t a k e n     h i m

just as
she had.

 

She is tearless; she has wept soft, ancient things;
only a preternatural feat 
— Courtfall; epiphanied! —
may move her fawn-thin bones;
the lips of all that is gone   ( cubless )  
and forever gone   ( mateless )
lain upon her stilted figure; mortality, anchoring.

Quiet;
a quiet sorrowing;
before she must hosh daun and away to her Weald,
all her wolves; all her workings; to never again wander;
for the end of Aurëwen must be this eve.

Through dimming, she drifts;
and there is some rooted semblance of knowing that here is where she had gathered her dæmon but
he wings now with herbalist, beholden to the briar'd heart;
Andraste wonders, lowly, what the fracturing of the world must look like to a dove.