It is summer and humid and charming out in the earth's blessed air; the flowers cup precious gold in their velveteen palms and the sunlight is heavy with clusters of dust, frothy and torrid with the spectral luminescence of an otherworld's stars, whispers of fluttering breath through the skies. There is vibrance on the lip of every hollow, every vein, every chalice of silver morning dew, and there is a haze rising from oaken feet in the soil and the pearly glistening of the leaves and the taste of it is sweet and naive and rare, but then there is a girl who is not so much a girl with holes for eyes and blood on her crown, sweating shards and beads and blushing tears of the fire between the sentinel trees, the arc of her breast rising and falling with laborious pulses as the silence consumes the raucous song of her own footfall, and she is a child of something wicked.

She moves with iron and sleep-laden legs, but there is a stirring from the world to kiss them awake and they remember why it was that they had drawn her here, and so they still, and the cruel sculpture of her face emerges from its brooding semblance of monotony. She is ensnared in a deep reddish hue as daylight slithers over her frame, and her cheeks are alive with the shadows her lashes cast, and there is very nearly a smile pressed to her mouth, but not quite, for the warmth has reminded her of home, and so she busies herself with watching the dark places of what has presented itself to her; an entryway, an end to nothingness, the beginning of something real, something tangible, something beautiful and foolish, and of what else, she could not know, but the thrill of being somewhere was enough to quell the passionate rage of her heart if only for a revelation's moment.

She takes a tentative step.

Perhaps if it was not for the heat, she would've turned away. Perhaps if the forest was not so curious, so cherishing, so gentle on her swollen flesh she would not have let it settle into her bones, but it has wound itself within her now, and perhaps if she was not so lonely and broken and half what she once was she would have poured her desperation into something more attainable, something more glorified, something more... more, but her stubbornness is unrivaled. She will find her missing parts here; she prays, and she holds the idea of men and kings and thrones and war in her head with a tender grasp until she can touch the watery softness of silks and smell the sweat of soldiers and feel metal burning into her skin, and she vows to know it as she had once known it and be it as she had once been.

She vows to find her son.

A shrill voice at her ear that she knows is not there tells her that she no longer has a child, and that she is no longer a mother, and that all that is left of her heart and strength and soul is ashes and a hollow skull and that it was her father, her emperor, her lord and master that had sent the flames to eat him whole, and she listens to the fingernails scraping down the iron between her ribs until she cannot stand it and she has to move and shake her head and get away from it, but then she sees that it is only the touch of leaves against her ankles and wind on her neck and she fears that she has lost her mind, for only the sane doubt their sanity. All sound has collapsed and she is standing in hallow emptiness, and she waits for what she hopes are the insane.