Jade Fern Grove klagelied

From Swiftcurrent Creek, Wylla continued to walk.

She walked into the night, battling through her weariness in favour of maintaining a steady pace, to keep quiet the voice inside her head. The more she walked, the more insistently it whispered to her. Maybe sleep would have been better than driving herself to the brink of exhaustion; the voice was louder now. Maybe she could have drowned it out in her dreams. Maybe she wouldn't have dreamt at all.

You are alone now. You have always been this way.

There was Stag, she reminded herself, blank-faced as she padded away from a lake she scarcely remembered going around. Stag would not leave her. She had left him behind in the lands they knew better than this, left him to worry after her while her composure shattered and she began to drown in her doubts and her insecurities. Maybe he was better off that way. Maybe if she just never returned...

You've damned him, too, to be alone like you.

Yes. She should have forced him to stay with Sagtannet. There was Stjornuati's offer, but would that be any more of a home to them than Swiftcurrent had once been to her? A place to lay her head, relative safety, but no hint of happiness to it. The practical side of her knew this was the best course. She had to go back. She had to deliver their decision.

In the summertime this place would be verdant and splendid, but Wylla did not see it, nor its potential, nor Mahler whose path she would soon intersect. She saw only the yawning void of her own hopelessness, the truth that she had been born to inherit nothing but unhappiness, and the consideration that she would never sleep dreamless again until she succumbed to the eternal slumber.