Heron Lake Plateau it's easier than just waiting around to die

A week or so back, Raleska had thought it intelligent and rightfully well-planned for her to go looking for her brothers. Not Svalinn, but her other brothers - the ones she still remembered, and missed.

There were a lot of reasons this plan was lacking in foresight; the weather had gotten colder, she wasn't old enough to be on her own safely, and, frankly, the girl just didn't have any sort of survival skills to make such an expedition a success. But, being a child and thinking like a child, Raleska was so sure of herself: that she would be fine, that she could hunt by herself, that nothing would kill her -- maybe, this youthful naievette had been what saved her in the first place.

Of course her absence was noticed right away; her mother had been visiting the Shadewood when Raleska made her great break - it had been a few days of miserably hiding under the jutting chin of a beaten bluff before her mother found her and dragged her squalling (and a little bit relieved) back to camp. Raleska hadn't found her brothers, obviously - but she had found out that things outside of the Plateau were, well, fucking terrifying.

She was still on "house-arrest" as she glummed around, scowling into the dirt and assaulting a stick with her pent-up frustration. Her mother never let her out of eyesight now, and feeling imprisoned with the unbreakable despair only a child was capable of summoning, Raleska launched onto the spine of a young oak sapling, and started wrenching into its pliable arms with unsympathetic gnashes of her teeth.