The Tangle airë

So sorry for the wait! <3

A pretty man, it was true, yet the prettiest of men often understood the least. Marina took his comment with only mild bemusement, a faint flicker of a smile. He did not see that her search could not be in vain; too much depended on her, and she would not return to her children with nothing but empty jaws. She had survived more barren landscapes than this.

Ah, but he couldn't know. Hunger calls us all, she murmured, But it's the cries of my children that I answer. You might be surprised at what blood a mother can wring from stone for her children. She let her gaze linger on him, paying no mind to the girl who stared from Marina's periphery. Marina had no time to coax a shy slip of a thing out from the shadows. If there was any help to be found here, it would be from the starwrought man who'd addressed her, she was sure.