The sun had long since dipped below the horizon. Marking the place somewhere in the west where it had vanished was a lingering green glow, but that too was quickly fading into the darkness of night. Spring was upon them but on the endless fields the drifts of snow lay vast and deep, unlikely to vanish completely until summer. The wind that came howling down from the north was cold, whistling and whining with nothing more than the rare grove of dwarfed trees to impede its progress. It bit greedily at everything, tried to coat every surface in glittering frosty crystals. But while the white child could feel the wind and the fragile shards encase her in ice the sensation was neither painful nor entirely unpleasant.

As cold as the landscape around her she staggered slowly through the snow, tired beyond belief and more bothered by the beauty in the wintry landscape than she wanted to admit. It reminded her too much of the frozen monster she had helped defeat. A manifestation of ice and cold, of winter and greed and stagnation - yet still a god, just as much as the sparkling deity of Time. The implications of this unsightly display of weakness and mortality would surely have shook her deeper if the child had been old enough to understand the concepts of immortality, divinity, but right now it was enough to have seen someone die. Butchered. Cut to pieces and handed out like horrible tokens of gratitude for a deed that surely should never have been committed. She had said so, the magnificent flying princess who fought to defend the bear. That it was wrong, that they had no right.

But what choice did they have? The bear had attacked, hadn't it? And the Sparklight had been so angry once the battle was over, Erthë had heard her voice echo across the quieting battlefield as she berated the princess for risking her family by siding with the dead god.

No, it was too confusing, more than the young fawn could fully comprehend. It felt as though she stood balancing on the sharp edge of a snow drift, pushed back and forth by stubborn winds with no way of knowing what she would step on if she jumped down on either side. There was so much she didn't know, and it made her angry with herself. Why didn't she know? Why had no one told her about gods, about battles and fighting and the courage it took to move when magic whistled through the air? She grew angry with her parents too for not teaching her, oblivious and ignorant of the deadly horrors she had been forced to whitness - no participate in.

But as soon as she touched on the kind, gentle and caring people that raised her the dove's heart softened and bled with heavy longing. Oh how she regretted sneaking out on her own, without telling anyone. She was both hungry and tired, it had been two days at least since she slipped away, but more than food or shelter she missed their presence, their warm embrace and comforting voices.

Erthë sobbed quietly, but it was a dry and weak sound that tore away with the wind. She had cried so much these past days that the girl felt she shouldn't have any tears left in her. The cheeks were striped and glittering where tears had paved way through the blood and grime and frozen in the woolly coat, and the one healthy eye felt swollen and dry, burning much too bright from lack of sleep and witnessing the unspeakable horrors of war.

Yet... even through the mental haze and the swirling snow and the darkness, she thought she could see peaks rising in the distance, larger now than they had been before. Unless she was hopelessly lost she was getting closer to the Basin, where she hoped her family would be waiting.

They better be. For her sake, and for theirs.