Sitting in this position, breathing in and out was rather calming, the usual worries that assaulted her were blacked out, the whole outside world was for that matter there was just the void and her breath, and which each inhalation came a tiny drop of warm energy, just to be devoured by the void immediately, there was almost nothing on her mind - just at the corner of her consciousness - was a nagging uneasy feeling, this was scary and foreign, as if something fundamentally changed within her.

But she did continue - not listening to her primal feelings that usually dominated her life, not listening when something seemed scary usually ended in a beating or worse, but she could simply not pull herself away from it, something in that void stirred and filled her whole body with the urge to continue.

A day passed, the void finally showed some signs of filling - but the feeling of longing and the urge to continue was overwhelming, she had to use all of her willpower to snap out of it, as she left that weird meditative state she was assaulted by exhaustion hunger and thirst, her throat was dry and her whole body felt strange, there was a weird prickling sensation under her skin. Grabbing the canteen mindlessly she gulped down a large mouthful of the weird water immediately feeling much better, she was surprised to find out that it even quenched her hunger.

Feeling rather refreshed she stood up, it had stopped raining outside, and so she put her old clothes and some of the wet blankets out to dry before curling back up inside of her box like a little animal and immediately fell asleep, her sleep was deep and without dreams, washing away any leftover exhaustion she had built up.

For the next few days, this routine continued, waking up - falling into that meditative state, until the last night bell rang, a gulp from the canteen, some bites of food and then sleeping.

4 day later something inside of her changed, the before seemingly endless void was filled with was felt like pure energy, that energy started to slowly condense into something inside of her, she clearly felt how something formed inside of her belly, where before there was a void there was now a throbbing ball of energy inside of her.

It felt amazing, her body felt healthy her mind clear, her senses were sharper, she could hear the steps of people on the road if she concentrated on it enough and everything was much more colorful then it was before, she also felt a lot stronger then before - it was almost unreal - she never felt as good as she did right now!

Throwing off the expensive robs she put on her old and dirty clothes while doing so she also noted that her bloated belly seems to have shrunk a bit, even her skin seemed less yellow than before. Taking in a deep breath through her nose she made her way to the crack in the wall entering the dirty dark alleyway, taking care to hide the entrance properly behind the garbage she went off into the streets, she needed a bath quite urgently and the only place for that was the nearby stream.

Nobody paid attention to the dirty little girl as she passed between the pedestrian’s leaving the city walls through the north gate, heading towards the river that supplied the city with water - while it did flow right through the city, it was not a good idea using the water that had already passed people - and so she spent the better part of 2 hours going upstream until finally finding a nice secluded spot for a bath in the cold water.

Shedding her clothes she simply jumped into the cold stream dipping under the surface for a moment before paddling back and forth, it was quite weird, the water was usually rather cold, coming all the way down the snowy mountains, but today she didn’t really feel the cold, unlike any other time her lips didn’t turn blue and her body didn’t shiver, it was in fact rather comfortable.

For the better part of an hour she spent her energy playing around in the water, using this moment to actually act like a child her age should, playful and curious - she dove down to pick up some shiny rocks, chased a fish and splashed some water around - having spend some of her energy she finally climbed out of the water shaking herself dry like some animal before putting her clothes back on.

Just as she was about to turn around she heard a growl behind her, making the hairs on her neck stand on end, she slowly turned around, a short distance away from her stood a wild dog, dirty and scruffy, hardly more than skin, bones … and teeth, the dog was salivating while staring her down, the eyes bloodshot as he charged her.