Again, they leave the Edge, this time to venture south.

The Throat looms before them on the southern horizon, glaring and resplendent in the sweltering sun. Copper child spares it a wistful glance, her mind preoccupied with spiritual concerns. She worships the Sun; does he loathe her now, see her as traitor, another in the myriad of fallen priestesses, neglectful queens? She fell from grace as quickly as she rose, tumbling down from her fiery zenith with the ferocity of a shooting star. I was only a child her mind rebels, but the protest is half-hearted; as soon as it rises it falls back down, listless, without any real commitment to its vapid defense. The truth is she was not even a child, for a child suggests something whole- and the girl is a snippet, a shard, a thousand fragments thrown to the wind, a simulacrum of a real soul.

This is why she left the Throat: to find the pieces she left behind, the little bits of embers that mark the trajectory of her haphazard path. It is why she turns from the Desert now, veering instead toward the lonesome dark. She has carefully avoided the tear in the earth, veering clear of these caves since their fateful escape, and even as she nears them she feels herself tensing, her body a bowstring, rigid and taut. At her side her brother quivers, though he does his best to hide his dismay. He would rather be returning home, crossing the bridge into the desert, digging for voles and pursuing old haunts- but he does not falter, does not yield; he is a valiant squire at his sister's side, a beam of courage to which she clings.

The entrance to the caves glares like a chasm, a nightmare; in her mind it oozes malevolence and malcontent. As they hover on its outskirts a breeze picks up, spiraling, brusque, around the cavern's edge. It seems to howl a contemptuous tune, shrill, a mocking laughter which rings through her ears; and the girl takes a cautious step backwards, black eyes wide and spirits high. Embers flutter around her like fireflies, luminous and evanescent, a fruitless shield; she falters, suddenly contemplating the virtue of this plan. The hole seems to grin at her, its cacophonous voice wheedling- 'Yes, little girl, little child, retreat. Be afraid, little girl'-

-darkness, beasts; she runs from Lace, runs here, a thing of bruises, of battered bones, and worst of all he's still there, still lost, a sacrifice to a demon she ran from like a coward-

-and she wants to yell into its depths, to tell it she is not afraid, to deny and deny until she believes the fiction, until the armor she pretends to wear replaces her own comfortable skin, her halcyon lilt, her naivete- until she is nothing but a stone, cold to the world but finally strong, finally someone who is not afraid no matter how that arrogance and bravado may chafe. She wants to forget her fear, to forget her shame. She has spent the years trying to be what she is not, and forgetting what she is.

She wants to leave these caves, to abandon the fragment of herself which she knows she'll find within. She does not want to think about what she's done.

She takes a step toward the hole.

"I am afraid," the girl admits. Low alto voice carries on the breeze; the cavern seems content to listen, almost curious to know what she has come to confess. "But I'm here. And maybe that's the first step to being brave."