Emberwood The kids aren't all right.

It was all too much, and she should have known better. The world outside of Elysium, outside of the Hollow, the one that Mal tried to warn her about, and the one which had stolen her brother away - her mother, her father, every bit of her world -- it was all too much. The little girl should have known better than to trust in the universe; alas, her innocence had come at a cost.

Ibis had not been prepared for any part of life without her parents. She liked to think of herself as an adventurer, but adventurers did not require the constant presence of a brother at their flank, a Paladin; she was no adventurer, no warrior. A damsel in a glass tower, maybe. She had thought of herself as worldly for having travelled across the valley but that too was a lie. Ibis knew as much about the world as a fish might about dry land.

And now look at her. Asleep at the breast of a strange man. Her mind reeling from the shock of her dark discovery, even while she slept. Trying so hard to prove her worth to a gaggle of strangers who need not pledge themselves to her; desperate for affection, for family, having given it all up -- that glass tower splintering slowly, until this moment. A life shattered to pieces. Dashed upon rocks, buried in the snow.

No, that wasn't her. That was the dead woman - the body. Ibis couldn't tell them apart within her dream (if that's even what you would call this state of flux, this slumbering she could not wake from). Her breathing slowed; her thin sides undulated at an irregular tempo and then calmed, slow, so slow, and as she slipped deeper in to this dream state, she found some sense of peace.

Ibis would not wake.