Larksong Grotto Ankärr

The offer is clear: he would take her home.
Why? The blue eyes seem to ask. Was this not some device— some bargain? Would Skorpa not press his dominance of her now, by proximity? The willful part of her father’s daughter told Ayovi this was sheer idiocy, to follow readily into the viper’s pit.
And yet— she can almost feel Faust in this deathless wood, his rural eyes watching from pockets of shadow. He would come soon to reclaim her, she knew. She would not stay hidden from him forever.
Perhaps she trusts too easily. The huntress might later reproach herself for naïveté, having so little in her life to fear or suspect before the advent of Wide Fang.
Head shaking, she tears her claws across Skorpa’s plains, rending it in destruction.
“Gone.” The vapory voice is lost to the forested woodland. From their wintry canvas emerges a new etching: the ragged edge of a mountain
There, at its heart, Ayovi sets her paw. She weds their eyes.
“North.”