A light layer of frost was melting off of me, as the morning rays touched them. I couldn’t move, the sense of loss I felt was bearing too heavily down on me. Loss of Inparem. Loss of the village. Loss of Matre. Loss of Ursula, and what our bond could have been. Loss of my family, of my home all over again.

I had been in a position similar to this before, when I had first arrived. I had nothing and nobody then. But back then I had hope, and a drive to live. Now I had less than that. Easiest would be to stay where I was, allow some wild animal to kill me or die of starvation.

Guilt, regret, despair. Those are the feelings that eventually made me move. It was hard. Harder than giving up. However, more than I wanted to die, to give up, I wanted redemption. That was the motivation that moved me. I wanted somehow, someway to be more than my past. To have been someone worthy of Inparem’s and Matre’s love. Worthy of the bond I almost had with Urusla. To build something that could last. Perhaps a haven, as Matre did with the village.

I had been so stupid. Treating my reality as real or unreal as it fit me. I couldn’t go on living like that. I should never have tried to kill Ursula. Desperation had blinded me. Never again. I wanted to be a good person, to do good. But I couldn’t go back to the village, not even to rebuild. Setting aside the risks, it would have been too painful. Aching, I moved slowly and took one of the sharpened sticks that had fallen as Inparem had been shaken, and started to dig. As I dug, I planned. I could still go to Lascus. I could probably survive for a time without money, until I found work. Any work. My hands were slick with sweat and blood, slipping on the stick as I dug Inparems grave. My wound reopened and blood mixed into the dirt of his grave. Only when I was finished, and Inparem’s body was laid to rest, did I crawl to my basket and allow myself to eat and drink. I had no stones or flowers for his grave. I left my sweat, blood, tears and clothes from my old world with him, with a vow that I would change. I wouldn’t be that girl anymore. This time, I wouldn’t rely on anybody but myself and I would do more than just scraping by. Before I buried him, I spoke to him in a broken voice. I told him that I loved him. I wished I had told him that before. That I had not been full of fear and doubts.

I had never seen a map of this world, but I knew generally where Lascus was, it was on the other side of the Walker’s forest, where the Dual River came out. How far that was, I did not know. I could follow the river, through the forest and reach it. But the forest was dangerous, more dangerous than the outland hills around it. If I followed the edge of the forest, I would still reach the city. It would take longer, but it was safer. While that made sense, the true reason that tipped my decision was another one. Following the river was an old path, something I had done before. I wanted to be different from my past, and go forward another way.

There was one last thing to do before I set out. Heading to the river, I stripped. I walked only to the height of my knees. Ignoring the pain as best I could, I slowly sat. With the dirt and blood washing away, I could see the wound Ursula had left me with. A slash of claws from shoulder to the opposite hip. The deepest part was where it started, at my shoulder, and it became gradually shallower as it reached down to my hip.

The danger of infection was real, I had no healing moss or sanitary bandages. I could sanitize some bandages now, but without a regular source of water on the edge of the forest, I would soon run out of water to continue doing that. I washed my ripped clothes as best as I could, and wore the one change of clothes I had. If I got an infection, or if it wasn’t already infected I pessimistically thought, I would have to rely on fighting it off.

With that, I started walking. My basket was bumping as usual against my thigh. I walked skirting the edge of the forest, it was easy to tell where the edge was. There was an invisible line that divided the trees dotting the edge and the forest itself. Although it was invisible, it was unmistakable. There was a change of atmosphere when crossing the line. Every night, I climbed up one of the trees on the edge, as Inparem had taught me, and slept in a hammock on the delicate cracking branches of the very top. High above the reach of the larger predators, the precarious position became a place of safety for me. Climbing up and down was no longer mentally challenging, I had found a confidence when climbing that I would reach the top, and the bottom. It was the tugging of the wound that was the hardest part. I would probably never have the easy intuitive grace of Inparem when climbing, who had done it since childhood, but I was now a practiced climber.

I limited myself to one meal a day. I had the food Inparem had calculated for the both of us. The original plan had been to supplement it with foraging and hunting. Neither was something I could do well. On a lucky day, I found a nest of eggs and on another one, a bush with late fall berries. I ate even the ones rotting on the ground. One day, there had been a patch of mushrooms that looked similar to ones I had eaten before. My hand reached out to pick one, but I wasn’t sure of it, and didn’t dare to eat it.

Careful rationing wasn’t enough, after a week and a half, the two water skins were empty. A week later, the food was finished. My wound was inflamed, as were the blisters on my hand from the frantic digging of Inparems grave. I didn’t know how much farther was left towards the city, and going back wasn’t an option. I was now relying completely on foraging, but the occasional herb I recognized didn’t sustain me.

The days started to peel away faster and faster. Walking, exhaustion and thirst stretched into one line of undefinable time. My throat was so dry and sore, I sucked on grass. I don’t know how many days have passed, until one day it started to rain. That rain was a blessing and a curse. It filled me and my water skins with enough energy to continue on, but the cold and infection had me shakingly walking in a fever. I knew I was sick. I could barely see outside of the haze of it. I would focus on the tree in front of me, walk to it and focus walking on to the next. If I stopped, I didn’t know if I would be able to continue. Step after staggering step, I continued.

As I walked, a sentence reverabted in my mind. They are animals like any other. It had been one of the last things Inparem had spoken to me, as we had discussed hunting Ursula. What had made me judge that some animals were fine to eat? I would never eat meat again. I would never hunt again. Never again.

Finally, with my lips dried and my legs trembling, I saw a distant city wall. Lascus.

***

Three Weeks Ago

If he had been human, he would have started awake. But he wasn’t, he hadn’t been for a very long time. Instead, he lifted his head from resting on the chair. Picking out the necklace he had hidden in a stitched pouch within his sleeve, he held it delicately in his clawed hands and swung it over a board on the table in front of him.

The necklace caught over one of the painted symbols of the board, and refused to move away from it. It was a symbol mirror of its own image, a necklace with a giant stone. He smiled, his fangs yellower than his skin. Soon he thought, the last piece was coming, and their promise to the Walkers would be fulfilled.