Kintla Flatlands my heart will be blacker than your eyes.

@Aktaiê or any Nereides really who will come recruit my sad little girl since I missed the original party ^_^

It was late in the evening. Clouds swirled overhead and somewhere far off, thunder boomed across the sky. She was returning from a day of studies with her mentor. The journey was long, for there were no Keepers in the Darroch pack. Darrochs were warriors, outriders and hunters. Darrochs were not storytellers.

Her mother appeared, a lovely black ghost on the land with eyes that shined a warm silvery blue. But something was wrong. Her eyes were hard like shards of ice. She approached her daughter stiffly, mechanically, like a puppet fruitlessly fighting against its strings. "You cannot come home," the specter said, "You must go, little lark." The girl cried, begging not to be sent away. "It's not my fault," she cried, "Devia chose me, I didn't choose this. She chose me!"

The specter did not waver. When it spoke again, it was not with her mother's voice, but her father's. "Darrochs are not Keepers. Darrochs are warriors, Darrochs are blood and iron. You are no Darroch," came his voice through her mother's mouth while her mother's blue eyes swam with tears. "You cannot come home," it repeated, even as the girl fell to the ground to grovel and cry at its feet.

The snarl came with another crack of thunder and like a viper, the ghost struck while she cried and begged, again and again, the teeth at her face, claws at her back, and the roars of rage.. rage from her mother for having to do what she did, rage of her father for having such a pathetic excuse for a daughter...


Cethleann woke suddenly, gasping for breath as she rolled onto her stomach and grabbed the ground with her claws. She turned her gaze frantically, finding no one and nothing she recognized, which brought her to steady her breath. She was not in the Vale. She was safe; her family and the pain they had brought to her were far behind her.

The yearling laid her head back down between her paws, whispering a soft thank you to the Gods. It was still a couple of hours before dawn, but Cethleann knew very well that she wouldn't be falling back to sleep, not with her heart still pounding the way it was. The pallid female pulled herself to her paws and crept quietly away. She stopped upon a crest of land not too far from where she had started where she dropped to her haunches. Her stomach gave an irritated grumble, causing the girl to wince from the pain of hunger. She was thin and haggard like a rag doll--a child tired beyond her years with no desire to sleep for this was not her first, nor would it be her last, nightmare.

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