Wild Berry Meadow Tell everybody I'm on my way

His words cut her. Due in part to the power and sharpness in Stark’s tone, but also because he felt the need to say them.

I know. Needle’s jaws clenched. The ferocity behind boneyellow eyes flashed.

Did she seem to him as someone who’d had it particularly easy? Had she not shown her grit? Her resilience? Her daring?

The starveling expected constant hardship. She was impoverished and gluttonous; destitute and covetous. All she understood were needs, though now it was time to learn about wants.

She would show him. That she was more than willing to fight, plot, and needle her way into getting what she wanted. She was capable of it. But until this moment, she simply did not have the means. Ideas must be planted before they could be watered. Kingdoms weren’t built alone. And little Needle had not been able to see past her own belly, her own flesh and fur, to see a castle in her stars.

No one since her absent mothers had told her she could have more.

Her existence had subsisted on whatever scraps she managed to rake from an unfeeling reality, and now the entire world was lain at her paws, stretched forth so endlessly that her eyes could never perceive its end. What he offered was incomprehensible to her, and still the desire remained. Firm as her beating heart.

The Haelvyr King suddenly loomed over her, as tall and piercing as the mountains he sought.

He said the world would stamp out the flame of her life if she faltered. That to fail among the peaks would be to truly prove herself weak. And she was silent, accepting. Unable to assert that she would rise above the task. He was being honest with her, as cruel as it seemed, which meant she had to be honest with herself.

I might not make it…

The girl understood that the obstacles ahead were simply the way of things, the way life would always be. She’d learn it would take tooth and nail to conquer them. And her resolute expression told him that she was not afraid of the path that lie before them.

Still, I will try.

She didn’t believe he would let her be extinguished. Couldn’t believe it. Was it even possible to follow someone while knowing that they wouldn’t hesitate to let the world crush you? Especially when you did not need them to survive? A glissade of fear passed through her heart at the notion as she watched him turn from her and heard his stern command. It was infeasible for the girl, starved for affection, to accept that Stark might not truly care for her…

That he was just as cold as the distant mountains and as treacherous, even to her.

Needle followed, wondering quietly if he expected her not to care for him, too.