Greatwater Lake wrapped them in "I don't owe you a damn thing"

@Donovan Azura <3 (forward dated for about 06/25/2020 - 06/26/2020)

It was not quite twilight when the botanist drew near the great lake, but somewhere in that golden hour just before. The sun had already been lost behind the peaks of the Sunspire's expansive range, long shadows combing the land with dark, raking fingers. 

The sighthound was a muted blip of cantering snowfall, a ghostly flicker in the green gloom of the dusky forest. The last beams of the sun's daily death trickled through the canopy as glittering flecks of gold. 

Cricketsong hailed the milkmother's arrival at the shores of the vast body of water, and frogs chirped as the pallid hart delicately toed the lapping pull of the playful waves. 

A splintered gasp escaped her lips as she treaded the cool waters, blissful relief smoothing across her slender features. 

The fire of milk fever abated in the lake's embrace, an unconscious tension melting from the exile's taut shoulders. Without the opportunity to relieve the painful pressure in her teats, without the ability to nurse the royal babes entrusted to her loving care, the midwife's banishment took on an agonizing physical torment. 

A distant sound bouncing over the loch drew her moonlight gaze across Greatwater, landing upon the sight of an ungulate family and softening in observation. A sweet, weathered doe, a young buck still vaguely spotted, and his younger sisters: two tiny fawns. 

Awenfen marveled silently at this tender display - watching as the youthful stag enticed the fawns into play, their mother grazing as she kept an alert guard over her young - and mourned the family she'd lost with a burn that had nothing to do with the fever.