Silver Creek Beautiful things

So she was alone.

Fancy that — the guards called off her trail, the royal family in mourning. Ah, the whole kingdom in mourning; black pelts slung over apathetic shoulders and dismal den mouths, the daily wailing of holy songs meant to honor the dead. Ilianora was, to her family, nothing but a ghost now. Nothing but a could-have-been, an unsung future and a few days of weeping before they looked on their other children and remembered that there were so many, anyway, and some far less troublesome than their deceased daughter had been.

She didn't mind. She found it funny, though, that they would mourn. They'd been the ones to bury her, not now but long months before she'd ever dared to dream of escape. Ilianora had been a ghost of a girl even before she'd grown into the thin, haunted, stunted woman who settled at the creekbed. Alone. Imagine that!

Overcome by something she couldn't quite name, something as strangely similar to joy as to melancholy, she set to working the tangles from her dulled furs. Too tired to hunt; too stubborn to lose herself to despair. Perhaps she would die, but not today.

Today she would look presentable, at least.