Blackfeather Woods I felt your shadow on the way home.

Thread title from "A ghost beneath the tower," by Winston Jazz Routine, it is a good song.

The eerie feeling of being watched did not enter his mind as the ghost drifted towards the line of trees; he did not hear a single call from the resident ravens, did not see the sleek bodies of either raven or crow vying for position in the boughs. There was only silence. An unyielding, almost possessive, quiet. The sky was overcast but that did not stop the blustering of a northern wind—this chill, raking its invisible claws across the expanse above the trees, clustering in the narrow hollow where he had sequestered himself.

A shiver ran along his spine, his thin muscles straining for warmth while the breath of winter gasped, yawned, through Blackfeather. Still, there was nothing. Mou wandered and as he did, he wondered. He thought of Maegi and of her brother Ramsay, and of the many days he had been away, thinking himself to be afflicted by some curse; he had been a lure for danger since his birth and Mou did not think he could subject his beloved family to his terrors. He had reasoned away his flight from the woods, but now that he was faced with emptiness that echoed what he felt inside himself, he doubted his choices.

Mou had never made the right choice. He had tried so hard to be a good person, to change himself, to be worthy of Maegi and — and yet —

The boy lifts his chin and stares up through the sickle-shaped branches overhead, watches the drifting too-dark clouds with his one good eye, and tries to call out, knowing he cannot make a sound. Knowing, intimately, that even if he had been able to call for her, Maegi would not want to see him again; he had betrayed her in his escape, and he did not deserve her forgiveness or her love. All that he deserved was right here: this hollow feeling, as if he is the last living creature in a graveyard of nothing.