Northstar Vale you've made a pig's ear

@Andraste, but other courtfall people feel free to join

the foot of a mountain: where people come to disappear. where teenagers come to hang their shoes and parents leave their bundled up babies. limp, the bodies of mice hang from the bare branches. the flies and the butcher birds, locked in an arms race. 

astynome, the urchin. with her fingerless gloves and faux crocodile skin everything. a chill breeze sweeps through her and she's denied the chance to sleep. into the whistling mouth of an airplane terminal. tumbleweeds and pine needles and newspapers. 

she yawns, her face crinkling up like tissue paper. it smelled strange here. it smelled like something resembling civilization. 

one eye bleary, the other eye blearier, she howls.