Jade Fern Grove 'Cause everybody knows something I don't wanna know

For @Dinah if you want it, since their last one was cut short <3

Man, this place sucks in winter, Mae commented to herself, kicking a rock through the thin layer of snow blanketing the earth. Nothing green around; only frost coating the tall thin trees, an oddly grey cast to the forest that seemed depressing to Mae. Definitely no chance of teaching herself a damn thing about poisons until spring.

Instead she contemplated her proximity to Kvarsheim even as she drifted further from it. Mae still didn't think she could face Skáld again, not yet. He'd been so upset when she'd left him there at the borders. And she knew that he didn't deserve that, but she didn't think she could have done anything differently. There was so much anger in her before she left the valley. That anger still lurked somewhere in her, but it had been tempered by all that had happened between then and now. Nearly dying. Finding a new home. Learning about her mother. Those were things she'd had to do alone.

But she regretted hurting him. She always would.