Jade Fern Grove mea maxima culpa

she could no longer find simple peace in providing for the Hollow, marking their borders and dedicating herself to all the same tasks as she'd done for Morningside. perhaps it was her guilt, come again, her meeting with Siarut or the bloodied scene of her hunting partner, lying broken atop a woman she did not know. it was the latter that had her come here again, the place she'd seen him whole. she barely new the boy had seen him twice. the first was simply happiness and the easy joy of the hunt, the second she was a bystander to burning grief and violent death. but coupled with burning thoughts and a feeling of loss buried bone deep, she felt again how she had when she'd gone so far north the air had turned to ice. adrift, lost totally and completely. 

the sky was dark now, proper, she assumed, for speaking to the dead. she knew where her father's bones lay will perfect certainty, the route clear, but she could not bring herself to stand above them with all her sins spilling over.

and so she moved on, wondering why she found herself here so often, now. wolves were the choices the made, and here began her burning of her honour and her happiness. no amount of grief, of shame, of self-destruction or attempt to find the last of them would bring back what she alone had squandered. her fault, her most grievous fault, and now she clutched at crumbling earth as she tried to find her place again. there is a man standing before her now, so still that she may certainly have drifted past him should her limbs not have locked in place as they had. 

"aditya" says her mouth before her fogged mind has time to work. the word is strained and there's a weight above her again, and she feels nothing but all the grief she thinks is possible to feel in an instant and she's set fire to all she loves most.