Bramblepoint old wounds

Aneira did not answer at once. She took his measure in the silence; the weight of his name, the steadiness of his stance, the quiet gravity of one who bore not just his own burdens, but the echoes of those who had walked before him. The flameborn spoke of the dead as she did, not as shadows to be mourned, but as truths to be carried.
Teal gaze flicked to the canopy above, tracing the lines where light met leaf, where wind wove through the branches like whispered voices. No place was hers, not anymore. But she had walked far, and she still walked. Her head lifted slightly, chin firm but not arrogant, and when she spoke, her voice was measured; even, but edged with something colder beneath.
„Aneira,” a pause; a name was not a place, it did not root her, not yet. The frostmaien held his gaze now, unwavering: „I have no people,” another pause, then, with the weight of simple truth, „But I carry my dead.”