Swiftcurrent Creek Our heart's a mess but it's our only defense to brave the wilderness

@Komal (edited for change of thread partner )

One foot in front of the other.

It was a mantra, a war chant, a prayer. 

For days - how many she could no longer be certain - the words rang through her head. More oft than not distant and echoing, as a guard's howl ringing through the red canyons of Grinestone yet an alarm all the same. Weariness was carved into the hollows of her cheeks, the pits of her eye sockets, the scallop of her ribcage. It had muddled the faun's mind, whispering that it would be only too easy to just stop. Drop.

The pain was an anchor. A muted kindling that had once been searing, roaring as it burned its way out of her from within. An inferno that spoke of skin torn asunder, bones crackling within the flames - the pain of a phoenix, of birth. 

The pain of having nothing to show for it. For of all the aches that plagued her beaten body, it was this invisible crater within her chest that hurt the most.

It was sheer agony, instincts screaming that the empty place at her teats - the fire of mother's loss, the torment of milk fever - was a failure on her part. A constant needling threatening to nudge her over the brink, free-falling through the abyss of insanity: your fault, your fault. 

How selfish it would be, to grant herself that escape, when the punishment was so just. 

If not for Awen's own vindication, the terror would have seen her this far. The slow rate of her progression was an endless source of anxiety even knowing there was little to be done about it. In her heart of hearts, there was no distance that could ever be far enough; there was no fortress safe enough. Fae eyes rose and set over pale horizons in unison with the sun and moon - forever awaiting the threat of retribution, of monsters in the dark. 

The sun's light had already left this world by the time she reached the creekside, the eerie and ominous ambiance of nightfall casting a hush over the forest. It was a winterland, though it couldn't be called a wonder. A timeless in-between it had become under the moon's pale glow - neither here nor there, a purgatory where one might seek the lost and broken. 

A familiar spectre she seemed - emerging from the shadows with aptitude, a ghost melting from the woodwork as the haunting hour struck. Splattered with old blood and muck, tattered and numb to the gentle flurries sticking to her lashes and whiskers, the Fen sprite too shifted in the silver silence. 

A forlorn, woebegone woman in white, haunted gaze sweeping for threats as she trudged on - head low and shoulders hunched. Thin, ivory pillars trembled through the chill, faltering as exhaustion demanded to be acknowledged. 

Casting a hesitant, calculating glance over the bony white peak of her shoulder, the Saluki admitted defeat as the darkness held fast to its secrets - still and soft. 

It took almost more energy than she could muster to continue alongside the burbling stream, by the time she reached a sheltering overhang, the healer was stumbling and her vision was tunneling. 

Collapsing upon a heap of snow-crusted deadfall beneath the stone roof, the battered woman curled in on herself - shuddering and shivering as she tucked her face against slim limbs and covered her nose with a thin, curled tail. 

Tired as she was, sleep remained evasive in this foreign land, in the wake of the past. Blinking into the blackness, she tried unsuccessfully to calm her mind and slow her racing heart.