Emberwood The kids aren't all right.

The longer they lingered together the warmer she felt, thus the better she felt, although there was still that pit in her belly and that hollowness where her heart was. This emptiness caused by shock. Gradually - as the man tried to summon aid and then spoke - Ibis could try to focus her thoughts. She remembered that Kukulkan wouldn't be home yet... He was off with Bhediya at the meeting with Courtfall, or in the process of returning, she couldn't tell how long the travelers had been gone. How long had she been gone? A day? Two or three? How had she gotten home...?

Blink, blink, stare. The emblem of the flower upon the tree helped her to refocus too, and she nosed deeper among the fur of Tuathal's chest. Please.. stay, until... but she didn't finish the request, finding her tongue heavy and the sound of her voice too hard on her own ears. It was like someone else was speaking through her and she didn't like it. Maybe @Kavik would come instead, or @Marten, or -- there were so many names and faces drifting through her thoughts and it was overwhelming; each time she thought of her friends she imagined them in the mud, crusted with ice, rotting -- wrong, it was all wrong.

Something sinister was lurking within Ibis; it had affixed itself to her in those first few moments after finding the body. It had worked its way through her skin, through her breath, to her blood, her heart - and in the mess of moments leading her home, it festered. The continued feeling of dread and loss and wrongness persisted until this precise moment: during which she dropped to the dirt, fainting against the older man's chest.