Raven's Watch Dawnthief

Diane's movements were anxious, unsettled. Her pace would quicken each time the wind died down, and she kept pausing to look over her shoulder; uncertainty bubbling up every mile or so she went. She wasn't used to this quiet. Raised along the coast, there had always been noise—the ocean was never silent—but here...

She kept traveling upstream, keeping a ponderous ravine far to her left; wanting to have a distinct direction in which to travel, but afraid to peer into its depth. Afraid to keep looking at the water below...

She had never spent more than an hour out of earshot of the tides before. Unfamiliarity made her hesitant, but fear drove her further inland at a ceaseless pace. She figured that eerie quietude was a small price to pay for the absence of a constant trauma. It helped that the icy gales would sing past her, easing her nerves somewhat, but the shrill notes were not like the tumbling crescendos of the sea.

Her heart ached, and her feet burned, but a newfound and overwhelming phobia had kept her trotting for over forty-eight hours. She did not stop to eat or drink, and micro-sleeps came inescapably as she traveled. Exhaustion eventually forced her to stop beneath a proud overhang, where the snow was thin to nonexistent, and the ground was marginally less frigid. She buried herself into the hollowing base of a tree and gazed out bleakly from her confines.

Her stomach growled, and in ignoring it she blankly acknowledged that it was dawn. The sky was lightening somewhat, but the clouds were so thick, and smoky, and heavy with snow, that Diane would miss the sunrise. She sighed, her warm breath pooling around her muzzle, and she closed her eyes for just a second...