Ocean's Breath Plateau [m] wind runner

she was foolish.
red leaf tried to scream, but instead her throat and nostrils filled with saltwater, eyes burning. instinctively she forces her mouth to close, holds her breath even as the urge to hack and cough rumbles deep in her chest. behind her eyelids is a flash of white, and for a stretch of time she thinks she is going to die.
when the waves pull back, she fights for air, sputtering miserably as she finally looks up at cen, wincing beneath his rage. you are nothing, red leaf, he says, and right now especially it was true. her very soul torn asunder and splintering into tiny shreds; she had disappointed him again, failed him again;
again
again
again
tears spill hotly from the scarlet eyes, but they cannot be discerned from the rivulets of water. she whimpers, ekes out a humiliated, anguished sob, and it is followed by her only answer, garbled and meek and shrouded in the tones of the plainspeople: you cannot leave ghelan without a mother.