Divinity. Mortality. War.
Silva, Queen of Wolves, Lady of the True Woods, seeks her only friend Etan, who, along with other deities of the Council of Divinity, has gone missing for reasons unknown. Her search traps her on a world where the wolves ha...
She didn't know if it had been eight days or six, or maybe ten? She'd walked into Steelmint and hadn't stopped walking until her stomach growled loud enough to wake a hibernating bear. Then she'd stop, eat something from her pack, and keep going.
She thought she was heading southeast. She hoped she was heading southeast. Every fifty feet or so she'd make some sort of marker: a branch leaning against something in an odd way; scraped bark; some of her hair tied around a tree trunk. She didn't remember seeing any of her old markers, so either she wasn't going in circles or she was delirious and was going in circles.
Either way, she was running out of food.
The flight panic had died down after the first two miles. Then all she noticed was how tired she was, and in how much pain. She plodded along through the forest, withdrawn into herself, too out of sorts to even give a good morrow greeting to the various animals she encountered. She suffered many more bites from bugs and spiders as a result; it had to be pure luck, or Saeas looking out for her, that kept the Death-spinners and their venomous brethren away.
At some point she ran out of food. She didn't know how long it had been at this point; all she knew was that she'd eaten all her bread and all her jerky.
Did she sleep? She must have slept. Or perhaps she just kept on walking while in a dream state, not quite awake, not quite asleep.
She kept hoping this was all a dream, that soon she'd wake up safe and sound and warm in Enendoa's cottage.
She'd forgotten what warmth was. Her fingers and toes were frozen. The cold had penetrated her layers of clothing; now she was a walking icicle; she was winter itself; she was made of snow and cold and death.
Soon she just kept on moving because she knew if she stopped, she would die. Out of food, out of water, out of energy, on she stumbled, not knowing where she was going, or frankly caring. So long as it was away. That was all that mattered.
She didn't let herself think about Brinna, or the fact that she'd never see the woman she loved again. If she let herself think about that she'd stop moving, and if she stopped moving, she would die.
On and on, through a haze she walked. Was she even still in the forest? She didn't know. It didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
Though Thalaea did not know it, it was on the sixth day of her journey into the woods that she tripped on a root and fell. She tried to get up and could not, and before she could summon the strength to try again, her body had fainted.
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Thalaea woke to a warm tongue washing her face.
She didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, or even how she'd fallen unconscious. She vaguely remember tripping and falling, though that could have been a dream, she supposed.
