when water is as thick as blood

Amalia

'Cause she's just like the weather
Can't hold her together
Born from dark water
Daughter of the r a i n and s n o w

Amalia finds the place unintentionally, as she has found all things within the woods. Free to wander but wholly without purpose: thus is the way she enters the forest, a new adventure laid out each time. At least the trees do not reject her, spit her out and send her spiraling back and back again. The woods have accepted her - or, more accurately, accepted the whale, but Amalia will take what she can get. Her goal is only to explore, as it has ever been. Clad in the skin of a leopardess she strides with confidence on winding paths, ever seeking something new, some knowledge or secret left behind by careless, wayward Fae. Jyoti rests across her shoulders, still young and easily exhausted despite her spirited soul. Together they cast starlight and shadows, padding barefoot across the underbrush toward something red and wild.

It is a waterfall, they find, thundering from outcroppings into a crimson pool, bloodshot and reminiscent of the staff within her hands. And against the red, a silhouette, familiar yet unsettling, heavy with memories and things unsaid. Abandonment, apologies, firebird skies- has it really been so long since they spoke, seasons of absence and weights in her chest? So much has changed in that time, and part of her wants to run to the woman, to wrap her arms around the Ascended who is something like family in her mind, spew her hurt and fears and triumphs, be soothed and answered and reassured.

She does not run. She does not embrace. She does not say the things on her tongue. She stands behind the red-lit woman and grips her staff and waits, her voice an alto note beneath the water, strained by a million things unsaid. "Wessex?"