As they walk from the funeral, Oizys feels her muscles quivering with barely-contained emotion. Her face and eyes are hard, but her mind is a sea of sorrow, a savage tempest of misery and grief. Her mother is gone. The only thing left of the ironheart is a grave, a slightly misshapen hummock of earth, and the gouge marks she's made on the gargoyle's heart.

She knows what she must do. Oizys has always prided herself on her strength, on her indomitable spirit borne of her difficult birth and upbringing. She's always forged herself in her father's name, hell-bent on becoming the cold-blooded queen she's destined to be, the demoness that erupted from the Basilisk's loins that fateful Frostfall day. Father would abhor her if she showed any sign of weakness, even The Thing in her heart that condemns her to long days of suffering. He would expect her to stay here, continue her mission in his name, even if it made every day a living hell for her as she existed surrounded by the memories of what she'd done.

Today, though, she doesn't care. Despite how pathetic it is, Oizys is running away.

She falls into step beside Tembovu. "Elephant King," she says to him, her tail coiling awkwardly around her hocks as she tries to keep up with his great stride. Perched on her withers, Ker shudders slightly, eyeballing his formidable mass with beady blue eyes. "I wish to leave the Edge," she says, abruptly and without preamble. There is little point in beating around the bush, after all. "I....I can't stay here. Not when everything I do will remind me of her. Of what I did."

Coward, the little voice in her head tells her. The yearling ignores it. This is something she has to do. She's not proud of it, but she knows with every iota of her being that she needs a fresh start, somewhere where she's not Oizys the Girl Who Killed Her Mother. She wants to go somewhere where she's just Oizys, and that place isn't here. Not anymore.

"If it's okay, though, I would like to come back every so often, to visit her." It isn't like Oizys to ask for permission to do something, not like the obnoxious, loudmouthed girl to show any token of respect or common decency, but this is different. Tembovu was one of her mother's closest friends, and she owes him some deference because of that.