She is as shadow beneath the trees of the forest, graceless by the bulge of her stomach when she weaves through an endless sea of wood and brush. It is not the forest in which she wishes to stay; it is too close beneath the shadow of that ugly mountain, too close to the heartbroken cries that still echo up there like the songs of vultures. 

She wants to be as far from it as she can when the pangs of pregnancy steal over her body – and it will be soon, if the size of her belly is anything to go by, it will be very soon.

Her eyes glint in the half-light, dark as emeralds and just as sharp as they peel apart the shadows. She is not an anxious creature by nature, never fearful (not until Raz had come, until he had broken her in all the ways he knew how), but she no longer trusted the ground beneath her feet. She had seen the world come undone, had seen the kingdoms destroyed and old mountain ranges crushed, had watched with the rest of Beqanna as the earth heaved rock and stone into an ugly monument meant to strip them bare.

She had gone, they had all gone, and most had been changed.
She had lost her wings for a second time.

The last stretch of forest disappears behind her as she slips into the meadow, a sky the color of rust and blood reflected unevenly in the gleaming brown of her skin. She walks until fatigue stays her like a pair of hands wrapped tight around her angles, walks until her breathing is thin and ragged and her lungs feel sharp in her chest. When she pauses to look back around behind her, she can still see the dark of the mountain like a bruise on the horizon. But at least it is quieter here. 

Turning so that her back is to it, so that she cannot see that ugly bruise, she picks an empty patch of grass to rest and unfurl the dark wings at her withers. They aren’t hers, she feels no magic in them and when she asks them to shift they respond only with silence. But they are wings, and they are freedom, so she will love them anyway.