She might have slept in the mud, had the manthing not stirred. She’d known exhaustion all her life; she had been training for as long as she could remember, a practice sword thrust into her hand the moment she’d mastered walking, padded armor strapped around her limbs. There had been no rest under Uncle Jonas’ black eyes, only endless drills and lessons. Tiredness lived in her bones, and she knew how to let it strengthen her. This was more than simple fatigue. This was nearly six hundred nights of failure on her shoulders, of an empty name and vengeance with no direction. It was having lost even the shadow of a home, with familiar faces closed and backs turned. It was Pylos’ little, broken body, slumped like a sparrow with its meat sucked clean, his eyes staring accusingly in his severed head. It was Uriah, his skin melted off his bone, her father’s spine scattered along the floor. It was Gildas, his golden head in mother’s arms. It was that wail that split the heavens, seared to the bone, and [i]Go. Don’t come back until they have paid for everything they did to us.[/i] She did not even know who [i]they[/i] were. The chain rustled. Samaire turned numbly to one side, pushing herself up on shaking limbs. The manthing drew even with her and shook like a dog, spattering her face with mud, to match the filth caking her arms and back. She needed to clean her things before it dried. The thought felt distant, like it wasn’t hers, simply echoing across a valley from someone else. The manthing found soft grass and tumbled into it, chain clinking heavily as it cleaned itself. Samaire watched it, still sat in the mud. It eventually stilled, tending to one of many cuts, and Samaire finally found the will to rise to her feet. It was a long night of cleaning, the man-thing tied off to a tree and left alone. By the time Samaire collapsed to her bed roll, the sky was beginning to blush with sunlight. She slept without dreaming. [right] -- [/right] They settled into a rhythm, of sorts. He tested her limits. She pulled his chain. Sometimes running, sometimes dragging, they journeyed west. The woods changed in form, from dense thickets of sharp brambles to wide bowers and soft paths as the days passed. Samaire kept them moving from dusk to dawn, pushing for ever more distance between them and the Zarnofskys. They found three more slaughtered doe, but the shadows weren’t quite so heavy and the stars never truly disappeared anymore. Samaire tracked, and hunted, snaring rabbits and fish for silent meals. Sometimes she tossed the man-thing a share. It was useless to her starved, after all. Nine days west and they finally broke through the storm. Samaire awoke to find the sky clear between the trees and the earth dry. The woods had changed again, with trees towering to impossible heights. Sunlight scattered like topaz, glittering and wondrous. The soil was black and rich and even the wind seemed to whisper [i]this place is more than bark and flowers[/i]. They walked along gentle paths, life teeming in green and gold and fluttering heartbeats. They stopped for camp early that night, before the sun had even sunk below the earth, if only to indulge the peace.