Ravenshook Cliffs Celandine.

If you go, it is without our blessing. You chase the shadow of your mother. Elder Mitsui told her that fateful morning. She appeared many years older than Naga's first memory of the collective and that moment she had been introduced to the old ones. Mitsui had never been a warm creature in her youth and had become stuck in her ways as the years passed on, as impervious as the glaciers of home. As unforgiving. Naga did not doubt the tenacity of any Elder and least of all the second-in-command. There would be no love lost as Naga turned away from them and began the solitary march beyond the claim. It took all of her focus not to give in to her own misgivings and look back over her shoulder - but even if she did, Mitsui would not have lingered. Above all she was true to her word.

---

A cool evening had descended and brought a calming darkness with it. There were no visible stars that she could see. The warm grassy smell of summer had gone stale and now held a strengthened minerality that for her was familiar, drawing her along between empty cairns of bedrock. She was a specter creeping along, not holding back as she improvised a path along the henge. The dark was not frightening and emboldened her to push further, go faster, feeling the wind in her ears and burn across her cheeks. The woman only slowed when a constriction of her chest forced her to, and then she was pacing her way along a crest while her heart thundered - her pulse a storm in her veins.