I float in an endless nothingness.

Mother taught me of this place, a dark abyss that swallows us when we cast too much magic. My æther veins have been burned by the magic and crushed, they’re like a berry that’s squeezed until the insides spill out and all that’s left is the skin.

This place will heal me while I float about in this waking sleep, far from the real world. There is only darkness, no light, no ground under my feet, no air to breathe.

There’s nothing but the æther burn, which isn’t so bad and is slowly soothing.

Mother is dead.

Father is likely dead.

Is there anyone else who survived?

Are the violent men going to find me?

The burning in my veins fades to nearly nothing by the time I feel something.

A prickling over my skin, like a thousand insects crawling all over me, through me, inside me. I scream and try to swipe them away, but I can’t move.

I awaken, covered in ash and rolling about on the forest floor, I throw my arms all about to try and get rid of all the bugs that are everywhere but they just won’t go away.

Trembling and dizzy, the itching finally rubs away. Lost in the cold, morning mists, I try to calm myself down by cleaning up my robes. Mother will be horrified to see me like this…

She…

She would be…

Cold, and itchy. I clean myself up as best as I can while the skin-crawling comes back for a bit, before slowly going away for the last time. I scratch at my skin, pulling up my dress to better itch at my legs.

Eight little eyes look back at me.

The spider, large as my hand, is sitting on my pale leg, staring back u at me.

I scream, and kick, and scream, and kick.

No. No. No. No. No. Nononono.

I tear at my clothes, crushing the leeches sucking at my life.

I throw my hair about and claw away the insects crawling inside.

I swat madly at every itch until my skin turns red and feels like it’s burning again.

I stomp at the ground to crush the bugs that fall from me before they can crawl up my legs again.

The forest doesn’t feel quite as cold anymore by the time all the bugs are gone, but I’m exhausted now, and I feel like I’ve run for a whole day.

Tangled roots creep through the leaf litter at my feet, converging at the trunks of towering trees, their canopies high up above, but even the low branches hide glowing little eyes. Thin mist hangs between the trees, veiling the world beyond more than a few dozen steps.

No one is coming for me.

I’m alone.

My stomach grumbles, but mother is not here to make me any breakfast. I know what the plants look like in the village gardens, but I can’t see anything here that looks the same. There are just trees and ferns, and scattered leaves.

They must be food somewhere out here. The animals have to eat things too, so there has to be food out here. I just don’t know where to find it.

So, I walk.

I’m tired, but I have to walk if I want to find anything to eat.

Tall roots, hidden in the undergrowth, grab at my feet trying to trip me and thick ferns block my path, the little hairs on them prickling my skin where I touch them. The forest only gets darker and darker, the deeper I walk, the mist rippling around me before settling again behind me.

Behind every corner, hiding from me, I sometimes see mother or father, searching for me as I am for them. I can almost imagine them coming through the mists to find me here, they’ll tell me everything is alright, and they’ll lead me home to a warm supper.

Of course, they don’t appear.

Just like that little bird long ago, they’re dead.

They won’t come back.

I understand it.

I just don’t want to believe it.

The trees surrounding me look the same in every direction, if I pause for just a moment, I forget which way is forwards and which way back. With no clue where home is, or if it’s even safe to return, it doesn’t matter which way I go.

I left my shoes in my room, so the more I walk, the more it hurts. Sticks and stones hidden beneath the leaf litter stab into my feet, but I can’t stop. I need to keep looking or I’m going to die, too.

When my feet hurt so bad that I can’t walk anymore, I take a small break and sit on a large root. My feet are bleeding. I should have listened better to mother when she was trying to teach me healing magic, but it’s too late now.

And if I want for the impossible, I’d rather wish for mother and father to be here.

As I wander, the day stretches in my mind. Is it still morning? Has the sun even risen? Or has a whole day passed without my knowing? The shadow of the canopy steals away my sense of time, and I’ve nothing I can do but walk around in this unchanging forest.

Yet, for all the time that seems to have passed, I find no familiar vegetables or fruit trees, not even anything that might seem edible. I lean against a tall tree, looking around as my stomach aches and feet sting.

A warmth builds up behind my eyes.

“Don’t cry in public.” I can hear father’s kind voice, echoing through my memories. “Bottle up those feelings, then bring them back home. Cry in your room where no one can see, like a strong girl, okay.”

I breathe slowly, the cold forest air fills my lungs and I hold it inside until it’s warm, slowly letting it out again. I think of mother and father, of my hometown. I push all those feelings down deep into my gut where they can’t escape.

I have to be a strong girl for mother and father.

Opening my eyes and looking around at the forest, I try to find something that I’ve missed.

A grey fern stands near me, its leaves thick, like some of the vegetables that mother cooks up. I snap the end of the branch and nibble on the wet part of it, then I gnaw on it, pulling off a mouthful. After a few seconds, it stings my mouth, and I have to spit it back out.

What do I do if I find no food?

Where will I sleep tonight?

Where am I even going?

I only know my own small village, everything beyond may as well be the stuff of fairy tales, and now abandoned within them I can hardly tell whether a dragon might claw its way down to gobble me up, or a fairy summon me to their home.

Yet, it’s the bugs that are my company.

There is no fairy.

No dragon.

I am alone.

“Isn’t there someone else here? Anyone?”

I stare down at the brown muck covering the forest floor, only barely noticing something that stands apart from the rest of it.

Soft fur, brown as the earth it lays upon, and as motionless as well. The beast is a type of fox that I’ve seen at the edge of the forest from time to time, they use frost magics, or so mother said.

Kneeling by its side, I gently roll it from the mud to see its whole body a little more clearly. Bugs crawl all through her fur and are digging themselves into her dull eyes. I swipe them away furiously before looking her over again.

Her fur is mostly still intact, except for a large cut along her chest. She must have run away from whatever had done this to her, but death still came for her soon after.

“Dawn,” I whisper her name and offer her my æther.

Mother told me not to do this, but I don’t want to be alone out here. Directing the magic carefully, I feed it into the small body until it reaches a point where something changes.

She rises slowly to her dainty, little paws, looking up at me with her one glazed eye, as a bug pushes the other free and flies off with it. Dawn raises her paw but fails to smack the bug down.

Her remaining eye then turns to me, as she wheezes out a little bark.

“Food,” I whisper, hoping that somewhere in her half-rotted mind she might remember.

She still recalls a crippling, desperate hunger of her own, a feeling she’d known quite well in life. Searching for food had been so deeply ingrained in her that she can still clearly remember it now.

She gives a small, dry, yelp before trotting off, leading the way. Her cute, little feet tap out a rhythm in the ground as she tracks ahead, glancing back at me when I lag behind and crying out with another soft little yelp.

She navigates through memory, and it’s not long before we reach the side of a creek, the water gurgling gently downwards, and the shrubs growing thick by the waterside. Here, she plucks at berries that grow from a bush, piling them before me and looking up at me with a gentle eye and a confident little bark as if telling me to go ahead.

I demolish the berries in seconds, plucking at the higher ones that Dawn couldn’t reach and inhaling them too. My fingers are soon stained purple, but there are no more berries hanging from the bushes.

“Is there any more?” I ask Dawn.

Digging through her mind, she finds something more. Something she’d only eat when truly desperate.

She pulls at some of the reeds by the waterside and waves her tail at me, her long fluffy ears fluttering in the water spray as she waits.

Impatiently, I plunge into the meal, clearing the creek of edible reeds, even swallowing mouthfuls of mud. It all settles into my stomach, and as awful as it tastes, my stomach doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Dawn watches on without joining me, her cold eye following me.

“Don’t judge me,” I whisper to her, trembling in the cold water and feeling a little silly.

I stare into her eye for a little while, as she sits perfectly still. Dead, but still moving.

“I should clean myself up.”

Splashing in the cold water is enough to make my skin hurt, but I don’t mind it much when I remember all bugs crawling over me. I imagine the freezing water washing away the spiders while ducking my head under the surface and letting it wash through my hair.

I try to clean the dirt from my clothes as best as I can, but it’s stained in deep.

“Mother…” She will never again scold me for getting my clothes filthy. Never again clean for me, cook for me, smile, or hug me.

It’s so cold.

I pull Dawn into my arms, but she is no warmer than I. And my æther is waning…

We still have time.

I hold Dawn closer, hugging her tough fur as she snuggles into me too.

An ear-splitting howl erupts from the dark, misty forest around us. Mother always told me to avoid this place, she told me stories of all the monsters living here, how they’d kill me and tear me apart.

Hugging Dawn tighter, I turn to face the monsters as they step out from the mists.

Standing taller than me by a hand’s breadth, their fur glistens even in the darkness, their exposed bones shining a brilliant white where the muscles and fur fail to cover it. The undead wolven closest to me tries to growl, emitting only a sickening gurgle as it glares my way.

I turn my eyes aside, toward the pack leader. The living wolven that controls the dead.

Its thick white fur is clean and dignified, but it’s the sharp blue eyes that dig into me, cutting me down. Such powerful nobility, and confidence, it tells me that there’s no point in running.

Mother has taught me of these beasts. The masters of the forest. Unclean animals that use their dead to hunt the living. They are as smart as we are, is what mother told me, and knowing that, tears form at the edges of my eyes.

I bottle it away.

Clutching Dawn close, as she gives a worried yelp, I step back into the creek, my eyes not leaving the wolven before me. I walk back until the numbing water flows around my knees, then I hear a snapping sound from behind me and I bolt down the river.

Or, I try to.

The deep water pulls at my feet, and the wolven barely have to walk to keep pace with me. The leader howls once more and the others join in, the undead are still trying to echo the living, and through their failures they’re even more terrifying.

Clutching at Dawn’s haggard fur, I push myself even harder, instinctively filling my æther veins with energy and pushing it out into my body, demanding that my legs move faster.

Body strengthening is a magic that I do know a little bit. It helps me run faster than the other kids.

I run, and I stumble, and I run.

The wolven follow from close by, sometimes leaning in and snapping at me. Catching and tearing at my robe.

Why am I not dead?

Are they playing with me?

I don’t get the chance to think about it. Even as push on down the creek, the wolven follow; their fangs snapping, their howls echoing.

My breath runs dry, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.

At last, I see daylight ahead, and I know that if I can reach that light then I’ll make it. Surely these unclean beasts won’t follow me into the light. If I can somehow make it through this darkness, I’ll get to survive.

I know I can make it.

The wolven attacks get more intense as I run, their snapping jaws tearing away the hem of my cloak, but I don’t turn around. Dawn buried in my arms, I run towards the light, my eyes never turning away from it.

Æther burns through my legs, offering me enough strength for this final push, and finally, I burst through into the daylight. The sun is shining through a gap in the clouds overhead, lighting up this clearing where I pull myself out of the water and collapse on the soft grass.

Seeking my lost breath as I look up into the sky, I lay in the springy grass, exhaustion darkening the edges of my sight. Distracting me from my well-wanted rest is a sense of ruin falling over me.

My breath would freeze if I had the chance to find it.

The hulking wolven stands above me, its lustrous fur beautifully untouched by death. I wonder for a moment how it is here, how it has followed me into the light. So consumed by my imagination, by a hope that the light might save me, I hadn’t even realized the senselessness of it all.

Of course, wolven can walk in the light.

Of course, the light couldn’t save me.

Too tired to even be properly terrified, I gaze back into its eyes wondering how it will feel to die. Staring into those white teeth, I wonder if I’ll get to see mother and father again.

The beast lets out a low grumble, leaning its nose close to me. I realize only after a few moments that it’s sniffing at Dawn in my arms, and I pull her away from the monster’s big teeth.

The wolven looks at me again, its eyes shining with strange thoughts. Yet it doesn’t speak, it cannot speak, and I can only wonder at what it thinks.

Its face approaches mine, sniffing with a wet breath that reeks of decay.

My cheek is wet.

It licked me.

Do I taste good?

After the longest moment of my life, it turns away, leading its pack into the darkness of the forest.

I can only breathe again when I hear its tremendous howl resounding through the forest behind me. I cover my ears and by the time I look back they’re nowhere to be seen, but the howl still echoes in my mind.

Above, the sky darkens, thick rainclouds blown before the sun steal away the light that I had sought with all my strength.

Within, my æther veins burn. My sprint exhausted all of my magical strength as well as my breath, what is left now is but a tiny trickle easily drained by Dawn’s tiny body.

“Dawn,” I whisper her name, holding her close.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I whisper, clutching to that tiny trickle, hoping to make it last a second longer. Even as I struggle to hold her here, awash with exhaustion, I feel her weight begin to fade away. Clean white ash washes away with the raindrops falling from the sky.

My tears are lost to the storm.

Once again, I’m alone.