The evening sun glimmered through the pine trees, towering yet still. Nature was a beast unlike anything I had ever dealt with, but it beat being in that manor for a moment longer. I’ll never turn back. Ever.

  A gust of wind nipped at my ears, compelling me to take it back. It whispered to me.

  Go home, beg for you place in the warmth.

  My response fell in the snow — print after print as I moved straight into the new world.

  I turned back to the manor once again.

  Fine. I’ll be back one day. You’ll get everything you fools deserve.

  Against the bitter wind, and the snow clawing its way into my boots, my hatred kept the fire lit. I have to live now, if only to prove I can. Even fury would cool quickly in this bitter tundra, a fact that urged my body forward.

  Frey told me to go south, but I don't know south from sideways. My legs deigned to stray from the straight line I had been walking, only getting away with it because I couldn’t feel them. I continued for as long as I reasonably could.

  Enough of this. I need to stop or I really won’t ever return. I took a moment to memorize the direction I had been walking, before breaking off to find somewhere suitable for a makeshift shelter.

  A pond sat in hibernation, resisting the winter’s frozen kiss. Gazing into the mirror, I found I hated what I saw.

  Not only had I lost my status, I had stopped looking like it. Snow blanketed both my rose-gold hair and my shoulders, and the former was ragged and unkempt. My blue eyes told a tale of sorrow, pulling me further in.

  The words he said to me echoed in a recursive, amplifying drone.

  “Leave the house.”

  Might as well have chopped my head off, I’d have done better than out here. Maybe he didn’t want to cause a scene with the other houses — nobles killing nobles is practically taboo. More likely I wasn’t even worth the effort.

  I snapped back to reality. What direction was I heading again? I had forgotten, yet another display of my incompetence.

  My ears burned once again, this time in shame as I realized father was right. My numb fingers painstakingly grasped a nearby stone, before launching it as far as it could go.

  “Gods... damn it all!”

  Bellowed my still coarse, and now dry throat.

  A shelter and a warm fire could stave off my impending frostbite. The forest began to reveal the resources I needed. Elder pines offered up a couple of branches, a boulder stuck out from the blanket of snow, and twigs and leaves lay buried just underneath,

  Determined not to repeat my earlier mistake, I fixed the rock’s place into my mind, and refused to stray from it. Lichens from the boulder, and dry moss could serve as kindling. A story I had heard about Merric, the one where he braved the western mountain, guided my every decision. The lean-to, how to build a fire pit, and how to light it.

  I grabbed a particularly long stick, and pinched it between my palms.

  A fire would be my lifeline, either I can succeed at this one thing, or die now.

  My determination was all I had left, and I had began putting it to work.

  After what felt like a century, a smoulder became a meager fire. For a moment it roared before me. Perhaps in anger, perhaps in hunger, perhaps it hated the world as much as I did. I basked in the radiant glow of the blaze for a while.

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  My stomach complained, so I gave it the rest of my bread. The fire pit grew low again, so I fed it more. Which one was keeping the other alive, I wonder?

  The evening light evaporated. I could barely keep my eyes open, though the darkness surrounded my humble abode like a choking mist. What I wanted to do, and what my body did became disconnected from each other.

  I piled more sticks into the pit, before attempting to drift off into the abyss. For a while I could not sleep, despite how heavy it weighed upon me. My eyes eventually closed as the fire sank to cinders.

  I awoke to the sound of a twig snapping. Whatever it was, it had interrupted my nightmare — more of father yelling at me, and the walls that would not have me.

  Sunlight was thin on the horizon this morning, dimly illuminating the forest. I leaned out from my shelter, propped up only by my trembling hands and feet to greet my savior. A rabbit stood at the source, bearing a white coat and no awareness whatsoever. Though perhaps it just knew I wasn’t a threat.

  I’d leave it alone, but my stomach would rebel and devour it whole.

  If I were to catch it... could I even kill it? Do I have a choice?

  Arguably not. Laying near the bottom of my stick pile was something suitable enough, if a little barbaric. With that in hand, I steadily approached the rabbit on bent knees. Snow crunched rather unceremoniously under my boots. I had mastered walking silently on carpets, and less so stone floors, but this was something else entirely.

  It popped its head up, swiveling toward me. I cast my weapon in its direction, missing terribly. How could that bastard be so fast? My body moved to action, fueled by remnants of bread, and remnants of dreams.

  It darted over fallen logs. I stumbled after it, and almost cracked my skull on a root. As the chase continued, clouds began drifting overhead. A damning grey-black soon covered the sky as if to smother it. The wind seemed to be at the rabbit’s back, and against my every step.

  To hell with you, Mother Nature. I am nothing if not persistent. My lungs weren’t having it, but I needed this to make it to Fuulen.

  Shadows stretched from the looming forest around me, and one seemed to move just inside the corners of my vision.

  That’s very unlike a tree... I’m clearly going mad.

  My prey started to lose its stamina, I was gaining on it! The revelation gave me a second wind.

  I shot a thrust forward, but an arrow struck its chest before I could. My face and the ground had an unpleasant meeting shortly after. Where did that arrow come from? The treeline had no answers to give, all was silent as the light left the eyes of the rabbit.

  In an instant, someone swept into my field of view. A dark green cloak flowed wildly in the wind as they grappled my shoulder. Springing forward, they threw me to the ground in a violent thud.

  Steel rang from it’s sheath, and I found my neck under a long knife. Someone with a particularly slim build, but they clearly knew how to use what they had.

  “Who are you? Why were you chasing my prey?”

  The voice was sharper, higher than I’d thought it would be.

  “Your prey? I woke up and chased the bloody thing down for...-”

  The knife inched closer,

  “shut up. Who are you?”

  “Do you want me to shut up or tell you?”

  “Now.”

  I placed my hands wide, as to not threaten them.

  “My name is Leonn. I had no idea you were after that thing, I mean it.”

  The knife went away.

  “You wont mind if I take it...”

  I shook my head,

  “I’ll be disappointed, but you did manage to kill it first.”

  The answer seemed surprising to them; Hopefully in a good way.

  “Why are you out here chasing rabbits, and in such thin clothes? What about the snowstorm coming in?”

  As if speaking a demon’s name, the wind began picking up. The hood slipped off of my assailant, revealing emerald green eyes, and dark hair tied hastily into a bun.

  I was given the chance to stand, and I took it graciously. The snow had been freezing me solid.

  “So... who are you?”

  Her eyes narrowed for a second, every movement was a threat — and there was much, I was trembling.

  “Marilleth. Of Fuulen.”

  I tried not to burst with excitement. I could ask, no perhaps beg for help. I have never done something like that before, but I am no longer in a position to be above that.

  Please is a foreign word to me, and it took a while to figure out how to say it.

  “Please... could you show me the way there?”

  My sentence walked a thin line between salvation and getting slashed.

  “Your clothes are too fancy. You’re either a noble, or you just killed one.”

  I suppose it couldn’t stay hidden forever, then.

  “I... was a noble.”

  She took a step back, once again reaching under her cloak for warmth or steel.

  “Explain.”

  To be honest, I still didn’t want to. My lips were dry and chapped, every part of me quaked to generate what little heat they could.

  “I was...”

  the words clogged my throat, but tears were unwilling to be frozen on my behalf.

  “They exiled me.”

  The sentence froze her for a moment, as if she could sense how heavy the story was behind it.