Porcupine Ridge but i am drifting

oh, marten -- he was so young, and yet.. so much more grounded and emphatic than indra had been at his age. her gaze swept across him with quiet wonder, for how had he come to be so sweetly intuitive, when the women that raised him were naught but wretches, carrying the burdens of their misfortunes on their back like brands or sigils that forever marked them apart from the rest of the world? surely it was his blood and not his raising that made him so naturally reflective, and not the blackened sisters that partook in his nurture.

she offered a weak smile, giving a roll of her shoulders in rejoinder. "you have to keep looking, to keep carrying that fire." it was a cryptic response, perhaps, but to indra, carrying that fire, that hope alive, was all that mattered. "the second it is extinguished and your hopes are gone, you are lost worse than them. you have to keep going, no matter what."