Själ

The girl had been particularly unlucky in her choice of friends, it would seem.  She had met very few individuals whom she had run into more than once, and even these had an annoying tendency to disappear when she needed them most.  Nor had she the luxury of choosing her family, all of whom had either abandoned her or died - or, in her mother's case, both.  The girl was in a particularly dark mood as she meandered through the Secret Grove, taking note of any muffled whispers or throaty giggles and electing to steer quite clear of them.  The girl was not entirely sure of the mechanics of sex, but she understood that it was a thing that happened, and that it happened frequently here.  She noted the smell in the air, the sour taste that it brought to her mouth, and she decided that she would just as soon avoid males altogether.  What use had they ever been to her, anyway?

She hadn't come here with any purpose in mind, and she had no interest in disturbing a couple's intimate moments.  Still, she had made her way through every corner of the great land of Helovia, save for this one.  It was the last place she had wanted to explore, and so it became the last place that she came to.  It had to be seen, though, just as every other place before it had to be seen, too.  The girl was searching, always searching, hoping to find the answer to exactly what she was searching for.  It had begun to drive her mad, that question, rattling around in her brain at night, when she had nothing better to do than think about her place in the world and how insignificant she was, how she was doing nothing with the names that ran in her blood.  "Useless," she muttered angrily.  That's all she was, all she felt she could ever be.

Ansgar had elected to skirt the edges of the Grove rather than to accompany her irritable mistress through its center.  The girl felt the griffin at the edges of her mind, but largely elected to ignore the cat-bird.  They would meet up when she left the Grove, and hopefully she would be in a mood fit for company.  As it were, the princess was taking her sweet time, wandering this way and that, pausing to observe any particularly serene setting that she came upon as though hoping that it would calm her turbulent thoughts.  At one point, she came to rest under a massive oak.  Its barren branches criss-crossed overhead, breaking the grey Frostfall sky into a million shattered pieces.  Its shelter lay beside a small pond that might have been deep enough to reach the girl's belly, and she found herself gazing aimlessly across its surface.

And this is where you would find the girl, if only you would try to look.

"Talk."
--Ansgar.--