[private] i know the rules, the weaker trees bend

[capture]

She wakes as though from a dreamless sleep, and when she tries to remember who she is there is only one word that settles like moth inside her thoughts. Capture. Except it is more than just a word, it is a name - her name - and she can remember that it had belonged to her. But she cannot remember who gave it to her, cannot remember which lips spoke it. She can remember the ocean though, and the softness of someone's wings. She remembers, if she thinks hard enough, that there is so much more waiting to be found inside her head. But these memories are all in pieces, and the fragments she can pick up and cling to mean nothing when they are scattered outside their constellations. So she puts them down again, turns from this forgetting that rises like an ache inside her head. Maybe it is best not to know how she lived and how she died.  Maybe it is enough to be alive again. She rises from the water, finding her feet as unsteadily as if she had literally been reborn. But the water has always been home, always a friend, and so she pulls it close against her chest until she wears it like armor against the jagged pieces of memories still trying to poke holes in her heart. She is still blind in this second life, still adrift in a world of unfamiliarity, but it is nothing new and so she does not balk from it.  With no one there to see her, no one who might be waiting, the steel and green mare follows the curve of the shore until it carries her to a river and into the heart of the continent where she is swallowed once more. I KNOW THE RULES; THE WEAKER TREE BENDS capture