Blacktail Deer Plateau From Under the Floorboards

The necessity of food had Raleska ranging further and further these days. Against a bitterly cold wind she set for the plateau’s edge when a cry came above the wind and bade her limbs to still. 

The voice. Raleska’s straining ears listened, knowing that voice — her brow knit and lip harried into a frown. Had she imagined it? Was it just a prank of the wind, or a trick of her gradually starving mind?

Had she lost her senses?

By then she saw Tunerk, a pale wraith against the grey — wordlessly she followed, stunned into a shell shocked silence as the gold-hooded Svalinn came into view. Lean, gaunt, and horrifying— but Svalinn all the same. 

Her throat worked for words, laboriously — finally, a name pressed forth. Svalinn? Her tone was hopeful, yet made so fragile by all the hardships she’d endured — where had he (and her mother) ever gone?