Whitefish River Little White Fish

"Do not despair at the brokenness of this world."

The advice of her mentor, a kind-eyed elder whom had secretly gone by the name of Katia, whispered through her tufted ears in the first days of recovery. Hard words to heed and yet, how she tried. 

As wounds dried and scabbed, so too was her heart beginning this process. It was a pain Fen hadn't the time to process - survival, running, was life now. The more distance she could put between Dredguild and herself, the better. 

Thus, like so many other prematurely buried things, the Saluki stashed the trauma and baggage. Saved it for a time when she could lift it from cracking porcelain shoulders, unpack it in the security of an elusive home. 

Onward, she forged - wild eyes gone hard and limping only slightly, with echoes of wildfire throbbing through her length with each step. From the creekbeds of her brief crumbling through forest and over mountainside. Steadily, silently, picking her way across glen, plateau, and fen with blooming relief. 

She happened upon him by mere coincidence. 

Winter clung tight to its hold of the world, holding the bated breath of spring in its lungs stubbornly; the world remained crackling and still with the cold, prickling to the skin and charged with the static of awaited rebirth. 

Despite the chill, Wördronna toed the edge of the stream as she came upon it, reluctant but conceding to the need to bathe. The grime of birth and travel, copper blood and sickly sweet death, perfumed her coat with its macabre odour. 

Gasping, a flash of pink tongue swiping over scarred chops was seen as the nymph treaded to the center of the calm river. The cold was encompassing, swallowing her whole with slow jaws that buried needling teeth beneath her skin, frost blossoming over her frozen bones. 

The gentle currents served to work the filth from her pelt, the strange selkie paddling upstream - silently save for the soft clatter of her teeth. Bobbing, the white speck of her crown disappeared beneath the waters for but a moment as she dove down - regretting the need to be fully clean as her countenance numbed beneath the surface. 

It was here she came upon him, gliding up the waters slowly after reemerging as if a materializing Lady of the Loch. It took a second for the showering sylph to spot him, hidden as he was amongst the patchy snow along the shores. 

A jolt of fear pierced her heart at the sight of him, spine stiffening as paws stuttered to a halt over the stumbling stones of the creekbed. 

It was then that a cloud passed overhead, allowing her to see properly in its shade, and her faerie eyes detected the lack of a rusty cape along his back. 

Relaxing ever so slightly, the faun considered him in silence - debating whether or not he would welcome her approach or abhor it.