The Night is filled by the sound of howling, her hands are shaking as they pass through the pitch black wood. The smells are too familiar she knows if she climbed one of the towering trees her eyes would fall on its outline atop the ruined hillside. She wonders how her steps are repeatedly borne back to these paths against her own will her heart feels clenched inside her breast. Sparrow – as she is known as amongst those wandering silently beside her – resolves to grab her javelin both to keep her pain from showing and also because the howling though getting numerous seems to stay at some distance. But there is something else, a feeling of uneasy dread that lingers just outside the vicinity of the group. The calm one lets all halt there is no point in running from the inevitable. Those with weapons are to build a circle around the injured and unarmed. Her muscles tense as she seeks to pry through the darkness holding her blade to face an invisible enemy; the wind still howls while her inner voices beseech her memory with guilt. Can she resolve the feelings and unite the friendships that keep pulling her in two directions? It is too close, the ruins and too little time has passed yet. No one knows who she really is, least of all herself. Sparrow lets out a withheld breath; how is she supposed to find the right answers. She feels for a moment removed from every bond to companionship as she finally beholds a dark figure among the farthest trees. The calm one advises with two women and vanishes into the black night. The group is to fly towards the Greenway, fear is written on more than one of their faces as the two women urge to move fast and one hears the trampling of many feet and horses passing on over the dried earth.
Sparrow hesitates among the trees. These are her lands, whatever dread there is must not she face it also? A spark of anger mingles with her own fear and sadness. What if it was him moving around the tainted woods, a smile on his calm lips waiting for her to return and face each other one last time? What ruinous temptation such a call poses! She knows someone of his description had been seen in the Breelands asking about her, she did not want to believe it, but it was more reason to stay in the wilds. If it was his presence that made the woods impassable it was her responsibility, no her right to stand against him. The woman was about to enter into the density of trees, following the direction the two figures had moved away to when her medal pulled free from under her armour as she sought silent steps hunched over through the coldness. It started clinking against her breast over and over, glinted faintly in the night - enough for her eyes to make out the insignia of all her ties to life. She fought back the urge for silent tears, a decision forming inside her ever battling mind. Something was changing inside her, so slow it would be hard to notice by anyone at all. A cry passed over the wood, powerful and tormented, some birds flew out of the tree tops circling above the slender woman as she swiftly followed the group towards north, the promise that when she returned once more it would be to bring all to a just end descending upon the woodlands of Annundir.
