The gray morning turned into a gray afternoon as storm clouds rolled in. Rosalea found that she had nothing to say. She walked silently along, leading Nira, Fen walked alongside her. The exhaustion settled over her like a comforting blanket; she found it easy to sink inside herself, and not think about much, to feel nothing. She walked in what had become a rather meaningless trudge forward and onward, heading ever toward a rising sun that she would never catch.

She occasionally looked at the bright moon in the sky; even it seemed gray, the blue and brown obscured by grayish white masses that reminded Rosalea of clouds.

She walked long into the night, until Nira began to stumble and complain of being unable to see, and Rosalea finally stopped them. She stood for a while in the spot where she stopped as the horse moved away and found some grazing and a spot to sleep. Rosalea decided to lay down in the grass exactly where she was and closed her eyes. “I am going hunting, Nadia,” Fen announced softly.

Rosalea rolled over and said nothing. A moment later, she fell asleep. “Rosalea, one day, you shall be princess, can you not understand the importance of this?”

“I never wanted to be princess! I want to be…” Rosalea in her dream was arguing, and she paused. This wasn’t right… no…

She was lying at the base of the tree, and she was reading. Ulric walked over, “I am surprised to see you working on your studies, Princess.”

Rosalea folded the history book in her lap, “I was reading here that I wasn’t going to be the princess…”

Rosalea awoke to something nosing her. She blinked a few times, before she saw Fen. “Nadia, you must eat. You haven’t eaten all day. You must keep your strength up.” Rosalea rolled over and put her arms over her head. “Nadia, you cannot just give up and starve yourself into nothing. You must eat. I have brought back food. Now get yourself up and prepare it.”

Rosalea sighed, and got up and used magic to scrape out a pit, and pull down boughs from a dead tree leaning on a living tree not too far from where they were. She hit it so hard with high heat Caelus magic that for a second the fire roared so high it startled Nira. After that, it was routine that got her through preparing and cooking the large pheasant that Fen had found and brought back. It was routine that helped her gut it and feed the left overs to Fen. She dumped the meat in a pot with some dried vegetables from her earth storage, and filled it with water. She sat, feeling empty, as it began to boil. Rosalea summoned a bowl, and without quite meaning to, and perhaps meaning to, she summoned the purple heart one Ulric had bought from the merchants.

She held it in her hands. It did not even feel real. She put it away and then laid on her side and put her back to the fire. Fen lay next to her and sighed softly. Rosalea fell asleep quickly.

She awoke because Fen warned her that her soup was probably burning. Her arm tingled because she had been laying on it. She rolled over onto her back, letting the blood circulate back into her arm, which hurt like little needles, and then she moved her soup off the dying fire with her magic. She had no energy to get up and do it properly.

She stared into the night sky. Her eyes looking past the light and to the stars, small jewels of white on velvet black. Rosalea stared into it, as if there might be some answer found amidst all the bright points, or perhaps some solace. Something to make things feel more like it wasn’t so wrong. Something to bring back a sense of normalness.

It didn’t come.

Among the stars, she started to patch shapes into dots, connecting lines between them. One of them seemed to form a curved shape that went back and forth toward the end, like a river. The stars above it seemed to remind her slowly of wings. Until she felt she was looking at a winged serpent… she closed her eyes and tried not to think any more about where the train of thought was leading her. To Kaylar, to home, to Lio… places and people she longed so much for. Where life felt a little more like a simplistic ritual where people stayed together, and love grew… Before she remembered what she was. Before Gods. But after Lio was born…

She sighed softly and opened them, looking at another part, watching as a cloud drifted over, pale and dark obscuring the starlight and shine of the moon. The cloud reminded her of sheep. She told herself it was the mindset she was in, missing home and the past, and turned over on her side so she could no longer see the stars. She lay quietly, drifting in and out of a sense of consciousness.

“Nadia, your food is growing cold. You must eat, please.”

Rosalea sat up and summoned a different bowl and had some soup. She had no appetite, but the warmth was nice. When she was finished, she became a wolf again and curled up next to Fen. It was getting really cold.

The next morning, Fen roused, and Rosalea roused herself mechanically. It was time to chase the sun for another day.

Silence. Mostly, she found herself following Fen’s instructions until she reached the end of the day. She was trying now not to think, not to fathom or rationalize the thoughts that were beating at her brain. Ulric died, and I was the cause of it.

As she slept, she dreamed of childhood. The dreams were fleeting, and upon waking, she did not remember them. It was before dawn once again as she awoke, but this time, instead of lying there or looking at stars, she got up, and made a fire. It would be light soon enough; she could see the pink lighting the horizon.

Fen yawned, stretching, splaying her toes and arching her back as she did so, and then shook off, sitting down. “You are going to exhaust yourself if you continue this, Nadia.”

Rosalea looked down, watching the fire. She had watched the fire two-day-eternities ago, the night Ulric had died. “Even though my mother called me Nadia, I do not feel like it is my name. I feel like I am Rosalea; it is what Ulric called me. For me, in a way, he and Nashota are like the face of the Ieshans. The ones I think of when I think of the castle…”

“What of Yelena? Or Nerric? Or Genya?”

“Yelena belongs to Kaylar, she can no longer truly have a part of anything. Kaylar makes everything he claims belong to him first.” There was a faint bitter twist on her words. A realization tugging at the edge of her senses that she had recently belonged to him. And she had grown to like it. She wanted to go back to it. Give up all the blood in her body and become nothing but another human being that Kaylar had claimed. That Kaylar taught, sheltered, and cherished…

“I remember a time when you despised it so much you would not go back. One moment of hesitation, and we were captured by the Ieshans.” Fen pointed out. Then she softened, “But Lio is the most darling, endearing, tender creature I have ever seen.”

Rosalea, despite herself, smiled in a twisted sort of way. “Creature?”

Fen was silent for a moment, and then she said simply, as if it explained everything, “She is not a wolf.”

“I miss Lio. I wish I had her with me sometimes, but… the Gods told me I should travel alone. Or at least, maybe a chained God? But it does not change what I long for, which is not to be on my own.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Nadia, you have a place in the world. A very important place. And you are meant to change this world, to change many things. You will be part of something big, something as big as Gods. Many would love to trade places with you to have the glory and notoriety of which you shall be a part.”

Rosalea felt sulky. She did not care what others wanted; she cared about what she wanted… which slowly made her realize that a great deal of Ulric’s heart ache had been her always thinking like that. All that time, he knew I was going to be the death of him. All the lessons he taught me, all the times he took me hunting, he knew I was going to bring his end. All the times he had to wander to find me, whereever I hid… How many times had Ulric wondered if his death could be waiting for him on the next arrow she released? Or the next hiding place in the woods he found? The misery of it began to press down on her, she felt like she could not move or breathe.

“He killed Gaiden,” Fen pointed out, suddenly antagonizing her.

“But Gaiden killed his wife.”

“He took your mind twice and rewrote your memories. Beat you so many times, it is difficult for you to account for them all.”

Rosalea suddenly stood up, angry. “I was going to kill him, Fen! And I did! He’s dead now because of me!” Her shout made Nira snort awake, startled.

“You did not fire those arrows. You specifically did not kill him when opportunities came, and you even saved him.”

Rosalea stomped her foot. “Why did he provide cover for me? For some stupid prophecy? I probably would have been fine!” She put her hands to the sides of her face, shaking.

Fen was watching her, slowly, in low tones, the wolf spoke, “Nadia, it is not your fault. His death being connected to you does not make you at fault. He took those arrows for you of his own choice; no one made him do it. You make a mockery of his sacrifice by wallowing in the pain of it.”

Rosalea felt stung by the words, and startled. It jerked her out of her sense of sinking beneath a heavy ocean of fire. A slow realization that a connection with it was not the same as the cause… though, if Ulric had not been there, perhaps he would not have died. But he had made a choice to be there. She put her hands over her eyes, slowly coming to her knees. It was so difficult to reason her way out of. Fen was quiet again, and she could feel the concern the wolf felt. The solace offered, as only a liana could offer it, as only someone who could feel the pain the same way she did could.

Slowly, Rosalea’s eyes began to burn, and she cried. Fen pressed herself near as she always did, letting Rosalea cry into her neck.

The days were long. And the certain sense of mindlessness remained with Rosalea as she walked resolutely east, chasing the sun in the morning, and feeling like it was following her as it moved past its zenith and into the west.

It snowed. It had been cold, so it only made sense. The landscape was still pretty though, unlike what Rosalea was used to from home. In the fall, the leaves were bright and beautiful, but by the time the snow came, everything had faded to brown. The trees here were a lot more varied in species, and so were the shrubs and bushes, and all of them still had brightly colored orange and gold leaves as the snow began to coat them.

Rosalea had a very good cloak from Kaylar. She breathed out a heavy sigh. I am going to miss all the winter festivals, and Lio is just getting old enough to get really excited for them. Rosalea wished she had thought ahead, that she had thought to manage to leave behind at least one festival gift and one birthday gift. She hadn’t though, so it fell to her friends to look after her Lio.

She wondered if it would take as long to get home as it had taken to get this far. She wondered if she could figure out exactly where home was anymore. I wandered around a lot before now.

It snowed lightly for several days, painting the ground white. Rosalea was grateful for the winter clothes Kaylar had provided as her boots crunched through the snow. The landscape got more rocky and intense, and she found there was several areas that felt impossible to scale safely with Nira. It was also getting harder for the mare to graze and keep warm.

“Fen, we must find a town, Nira cannot keep up with us like this.”

The wolf nodded and changed their course for the south a little, Rosalea hoped toward some type of town. “Nira, I am going to give you to someone. Do you have any preferences for me to watch for?”

The horse swished her tail and kicked a foot back. “Are you never heading toward home?”

The question was cutting. Rosalea took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I do not know when I will return home, Nira. And so, rather than take you all that way, I would seek to find you a place to make a new home.”

The horse snorted at her, swishing her tail. “I suppose it must be so, I have been waiting for you to say something like this ever since Master Ulric died.”

Rosalea patted the mare’s neck. Nira had been quiet a lot also, and so they had been a little miserable together. “I can try to keep you, but I doubt it will be safe. I would like it if you had a chance for a better life.”

Nira sighed heavily enough it was a snort. Rosalea patted her again. Maybe it was also a little bit the conversation she had with the chained-silver God. Maybe it was a little that she could not get over Annie. In any case, she was relieved when the horse said, “I understand. I would like to be with someone who is kind.”

Rosalea promised to do her best. They kept walking, and the trees thinned out. She was standing atop a bluff, looking down at a town. The town was stark against the landscape surrounding it… the trees suddenly receded into dark colors of a landscape dotted with the chopped remains of trunks. The earth was torn up, and it had a blackish quality that Rosalea did not associate with farm land that was doing well. In fact, it looked burned. The wind shifted, and brought faint scents on it that Rosalea could not place and made Fen sneeze. It was a harsh smell, something like bad eggs, charcoal, and a harsh metallic tang. Fen sneezed a few more times and buried her nose in the grass. Her ruff came up, and she looked agitated. “What is it?”

“It was not supposed to be like this,” Fen began and then stopped. “It is the smell that is created when stuff is torn from beneath the earth and burned into new things.”

Nira snorted, prancing. Rosalea thought about it, and yes, the smell did remind her a little of a blacksmith forge. “It is a mining town then,” Rosalea thought. The scorched land suddenly made a little more sense. She debated… she had no idea where the next town was, she had no idea where she currently was… except somewhere in Dyran. She wished she had paid better attention to Kaylar’s conversations with her about the world. She wished she had paid more attention to Ulric’s lessons. She wished she had taken time to learn all either of them knew, instead of spending the amount of time she had avoiding her education in favor of more interesting activities outside. Kaylar probably had the best maps made by man or dragon. However, she had never paid attention to them.

She did not know if she liked the feel of the place she looked down upon, and yet she did not know what else to do. I suppose that I should at least look around and figure out where I am. Get a look at a map, then if I find nowhere suitable for Nira, I can at least find a different eastward town to visit.

Fen sneezed again. “We are very near the forest Gods here. Please be careful; they cannot be excited by all this destruction. I cannot imagine what tipped things in the human’s favor this far.”

Rosalea was trying to plot the best ways to get Nira down the hillside, and she paused. “We are?”

Fen nodded just once to her.

“Will we meet your family?”

Fen looked up at her, “I do not know. I am not supposed to. I think we should focus on meeting the Moryshin.”

Rosalea stared at her. “The what?”

Fen breathed out slowly, “The heart of the forest, the king of all mystics. If anyone here knows the answers to the questions that we have, it will be him.”

Rosalea felt anxiety coming from Fen to her. She would move to Fen and give her a tight hug. “I want you to be safe. I will do whatever you think is wisest. If that is to see your family or commune with a king forest god, I will do whatever you guide me to do.”

Fen’s tail wagged a little. “You are very dear to me, Nadia. It is nice to see you recovering a little to be more yourself.”

Rosalea huffed and gave her an extra squeeze. Then, she made up her mind. “Fen, stay here. I will return as quickly as I can.”

The wolf sighed, laying upon the snow-covered grass. “Be careful…”