If Rosebay were truly capable of deep sadness, surely she would feel it for the disappearance of her mother. Surely she would feel something like fear for the stories of how her mother had sought the mountain’s help, how she had yielded that power to bring back lands of old, and how the earth had split to swallow her whole. She would feel sorrow for the look of almost sorrow on her father’s face and the way that he had faded into the shadows once more—leaving just her and her sister in the aftermath.
But such things do not take root in her so easily.
So instead she feels something like an emptiness that she must fill. A continued need to finish her quest so that she may become more of her true self. (She does not learn caution from the story of her mother—and how the help of faeries does not always go the way that you would hope.)
She stays in Pangea for the moment, wandering until she finds the young girl who is so clearly a child of Ghaul that it nearly stops her short. (Although she knows more of Ghaul from stories than personal experience.) For a second, she nearly keeps walking, but curiosity gets the better of her. Sinks a hook in the belly and draws her closer—delicate steps crossing the distance between them.
When she is close enough to smell the rot and the poison, her vision swims with excitement.
“Hello there,” she says with a soft simper, her lips turning in the corner. “I haven’t seen you before.”
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[Isotope]