Swiftcurrent Creek We are not the same, with or without

Wylla knew she needed to return to Stjornuati soon and tell him what she and Stag had decided, but spending her days on aimless walking was so cathartic that she just couldn't bring herself to go back yet.

Her nights were plagued with dreams and nightmares—a proposal that swept her off her feet or a series of contracts that left her bereft of any love or comfort whatsoever. Her children dying in her arms while Nyx's looked on, laughing. Taikon chasing her through the woods, prepared to kill her in the name of Sagtannet. Falling from the cliffs while Mahler turned away from her. Every night it was something else, draining her of energy and emotions. When she awoke each day, she was more and more a husk of herself.

The feelings were still there, buried inside, tormenting her. She swung from fiercely missing Mahler to wishing he was dead. Pain and sorrow morphed into self-righteous anger which crumbled down into worthlessness, throwing her through a never-ending gauntlet of emotions in her waking hours. The only thing that seemed to help was keeping her legs moving to shut off her brain, hunting or wandering, it didn't matter which—as she did now, ghosting sightless through the territory where she'd delivered her first child.

She didn't recognize where she was. On the inside, she was numb. On the outside, she was worse. There was no alertness to her hazy yellow gaze, no thinking going on behind the neutral mask that was her face. She lost herself in the mechanical effort of moving her legs, one step at a time.