Ravensblood Forest I ran all night and day.

Things were fine after his talk with Rosalyn. He told himself that hours after, days, and sometimes at night when he felt an itch in his skin and the sense of irritaiton that prevented sleep. He could make it through this plague of memory. Learn from his experience, put it behind him — all without bringing the truth to light. He could do this. He had to put it behind him.

Sleep did not come to him readily; Reyes paced some nights, tossed and turned another, lay awake and growing frustrated by the tumult of emotions his mother had managed to dredge up. If only he hadn't asked after her own experiences, he thought. If only he had kept to himself and pretended things were alright - that he was his usual self - for a little while longer. Now he felt exposed (despite being so tight-lipped on the subject) and as the days wore on, he grew flustered, incised, as if the very memory of his experience was a cancer growing stronger inside of himself.

So he escaped from it all. Reyes did not choose to go far, but he had to escape the claustrophobic forest and feel the wind in his fur, maybe even head as far north as the oceanside and taste the salt in the air; a part of him would find that flavor vile, and that part would drive him home again. For a few hours he had a taste of freedom though. An expanse of wilderness all his own, with no dark thoughts, no nagging sense of disillusionment, no homesickness. By morning he had come to another forest and he knew he ought to turn around; however, the brine-scent was stronger here than at the plateau.

For a while he would linger — nobody would care if he took a day to himself, he reasoned.