I'm a dream, a distant thought trapped somewhere I'll never be remembered, always on the edge of being forgotten — there is no one here, no one anywhere (So alone... please). I'm pushed aside, pulled under and drowned in my sorrow as the Throat turns its back on me (the child! my baby!)(where is she now?)(safe? dead?). They do not want me on their golden sands, dripping with thick black depression, oozing despair like some troubled spirit, drifting through the land with a heavy heart.  They separated me from the Damned child (mine), and even if I hadn't been the most tentative parent, it hurt. I had to watch her turn her back to me, to return to the Throat and leave me behind (am I not enough?) — she loves her father more, I know it. She trembles beside me, holds her breath when I stop and turn to her, flinches when I move (dangerous, she's deadly!). So I let her go, because I know that wherever she may end up is far better than wherever she'll end up with me — I am a catastrophic hurricane, sweeping up the unwilling and tearing apart the peaceful, eating up your happiness with moaning gusts and relentless raging. It's for the better.

I stumbled into the forgotten Falls upon rejection from the Throat, relishing in the freedom of openly walking through my old home, the panic and memories caught in my throat. What had we become, when we gained the Falls? Where had we gone when we slowly lost it? I remember us all, so eager to live beneath Seele's rule in a land of our own — not the body ridden mess that was the Marsh, embedded with haunting memories of ages long past, but a fresh, new start. Our numbers dwindled then, and now even more so (you're all alone now). Perhaps it's true, maybe I am all that's left of the fabled Asylum, the safe haven for the unstable, the refuge for the unique. With Seele's death, I we fell apart, receding into our minds as our monarch, our patron saint, lived on only in our memories. We could not find it within ourselves to keep going, we dropped like flies as the months went on, disappearing into an abyss that just kept taking and taking. It was not forgiving, swallowing up the whole damn Asylum until — just me ('rather pitiful aren't you?')('didn't deserve what you got, didn't deserve the love you had').

And to sit there, tucked away in the Falls, choking on my tears, was devastating. But I felt, I genuinely felt myself slipping away, felt my mind numbing, my muscles aching as I found the old cave I buried myself in when I could not handle the world outside, when my episodes just grew deeper and deeper until I didn't think there was a way out (there isn't, no escape. You're stuck here with the rest of us). And Seele, oh Seele, I remember the day she died, the day the shadows swooped down from the trees, from the clouds, rose from the ground and swallowed her up — they attacked savagely, tore her to pieces before my eyes, and it hurt. I lost her there, trembling like a child with nothing to do to help her at all. My body is still marked from the experience, deep gashes scarred over but still there as if they were new, dripping thick red as I witness the death of my mother for a second time.

The cave has since aired out, no longer reeking of my dirtied body as it had all those years ago, as I let months pass me by hidden away while the world outside turned upside down and inside out— the Asylum was filtered through until there was nothing left of it, strained like someone was looking for something of value among filth, gold among dirt, sifting away each and every member until there was nothing left of us but the worn paths in the shadowed Marsh.

My body aches as I look at the stained corner where it had once lain for hours on end, hip moaning out as it recalls just how painful it was to slide across rough stone, leaving hairless, bloody skin clinging to my sides and red smeared along the cold rock, pooling in every crevice. Sameira pulls up beside me, pushing her wet nose against my leg to grab my attention. 'Sameira saw others, they're near falls. Amara go look?' "Take me." She nods her head tentatively, darting outside without hesitance as she races rather quickly towards the aforementioned location, guiding me to a ledge that would allow us to overlook the three stallions that had gathered, "Sameira see them digging things up, what they're looking for?" "Her body." They hiss, wide grin flashing before my eyes as I raise my head and lower my ears, turning my head away from the source of the voice. But I know better, know that with my heart aching, she was cremated during a somber ceremony that I could only linger beside, unable to face anyone with a mind like mine. I had been ruined then, cursed to live alone.

Sameira and I make our way down towards the trio, uncertain on whether I should have done so or remained where I was, simply lurking in the shadows as they went about their business. I catch the antlered man asking what they were digging up,
glittering amber settling on the mentioned root, wondering why it's something of interest. "Yes, what are you digging up?" Sameira remains by my side, but I can feel her lengthy tail swishing eagerly at the sight of other canines, body twitching against me as her bi-coloured eyes linger on the small fox and the kitsune beside it.