Broken Antler Fen like a black hole

absolutely. praimfaya agrees readily: it does sound like a good idea and maybe, she thinks, they wouldn't even need to den underground per se. maybe someday she'd be willing to share her recently acquired fear of mountains and dens with someone other than her father but right now it's too raw a fear ...and it was something she felt she needed to keep as closely guarded as she could.

dacio's next question comes out a bit awkward sounding and praimfaya considers it with a flutter of her ears as she squats to mark the borders before moving a few feet towards a tree trunk where she rubs her shoulder against. how was she handling it? in truth, she was sort of numb to it. part of her believes that blodreina will appear in the confines of the fen at any moment but she also knows from the image of her mother crushed, struggling for breath beneath the weight of the boulder that she was gone. she remembers it every time she nears a mountain or thinks about a den.

she quietly struggles with the guilt she feels despite ingram's reassurances that it wasn't possibly her fault. for his sake, she has dropped it but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel it every now and then; its a little easier if she tells herself its the spirits of the commanders past will, as linkoln has told her. what was that saying he was fond of using in her dreams? the dead are gone and the living are hungry. this was how it was always meant to be just ...a lot sooner than anyone could expect. praimfaya's throat feels like its closing and she takes a small breath as if she could hide the lump of emotion that has lodged there. in other words, as well as she could even if her methods of processing her grief wasn't exactly healthy.

blodreina wouldn't want me to give up on my destiny or on roangeda because i am grieving her. then again, had blodreina ever been anything but utterly fierce and immovable? she would tell me to use my head and not my heart. praimfaya tells dacio, assuming that her mother's death is what he was referring to without coming right out and saying it.