Serpent Lake infinitesimal

for @Clay

over a month had passed since that awful day, a very significant amount of time when your life was still measured in these smaller time periods. yet polaris hardly noticed, everything had faded into this dull, indistinguishable blur of surviving. not living, this was something very below that. 

she'd fled the mountains, vowing never to go near their looming peaks again but was wary to travel too far from them either; when finally reaching the flatlands she now haunted she'd felt safe but there was something so terribly lonely about the idea of leaving the mountains for good. moving too far...it would be like accepting the truth about her family's fate and she wouldn't, couldn't ​do that. she lies on the rocky banks of a lake now; dull gaze fixed unseeingly on the rippling waters. the night was a sharp one, as so many were becoming and it would be a miracle that she hadn't fallen sick yet had it not been for the fact that she truly couldn't care less. it wasn't even that she wanted to die, the bright spark of youth still drove her to seek life but the quality of such a life meant nothing to her right now. 

a soft sigh slips from shivering jaws, visible as it puffed about her snout. sleep didn't come to her often and when it did she was plagued by awful nightmares; the awful element of them reaching a level that had her preferring the exhaustion clinging to her weak frame than having to face them again. whenever her eyelids drooped she'd viciously jab paws into the numbingly cold water; jaw gritting as eyes watered at the shock but she'd be awake again and that was all that mattered.

eyes lift slowly to the vast starry sky sprinkled above her and bit back the urge to weep at how small and alone she felt, the gift of youth rendering you invincible and on top of the world lost to her in these recent times.