She steps through the forest, and she is different.
It is not just the weight of the antlers that she wears on her head – large and brilliant white, with tips dipped in black. There is a different weight, too, one that no one else can see but that she can feel. It settles like sand in all the crevices of her heart, sinking it like a rock further behind the confines of her ribs. All her innocence and naivety had been left on the plains, when she had spilled the blood of a friend without a second thought.
When the red-lit dome disappeared, and her adrenaline had the chance to fade, her suspicions of it all being fake had been confirmed. And yet, this eased none of the guilt.
She had fought Voracious no questions asked, and then killed a likeness of herself without hesitation. The antlers that the pillars had gifted her with had been christened with bloodshed almost immediately, and she wavers between whether that is a good thing or not.
From the day she had been born she had not been made for soft, fragile things – she had been born surrounded by ash and shadow and flame, she had inhaled war before she ever knew what peace was. But she had never seen herself as ruthless. Had never thought herself a murderer, or as one that would deliver the first blow.
It is late in the afternoon when she walks towards the edge of the forest, and from where she stands she can see the amber glow of the sun as it washes across the emerald fields of the meadow in the distance. Their voices are a faint hum on the wind, but she does not go towards them the way she usually would. She lingers there in the shadows, eyes vibrant and sharp as she simply watches, and though she had never known her place in this world to begin with she cannot help but to feel more lost than she has ever been.
Aislyn
she set fire to all the things that held her back
and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was