Though not on stage, she had her part to play.


The days had grown shorter with the cool, quick coming of night. Winter was closer, gentle, seeping, sparing light only so much. These days, she prefered the dark, it was her place to roam, where she was all illusion, shadows, trickery.

The Fox.

I write this with hands that haven't moulded, haven't made, haven't touched, haven't reached for, haven't found texture in days, weeks. I comfort myself as I did when I first came to Rhy'Din, alone with the steam of a hot, hot bath, taking time, ritual like, to wash the dirt and blood from my skin. I sit then soaking in the mud and scum, finding that no matter, I am irresistable to it. It seeks me out. Tendrils, fingers, hesitant before me.

I haven't stayed long anywhere, the Inn tires me, conversation I cannot afford, there is too much I want to stay. I curl in my sheets every night, hot skinned, no cleaner, no less a killer, like a shell, holding myself in a way I cannot be held by another. Outside, the sky is heavy, laced with dim, winter stars. Nothing holds my attention anymore. All the stories I've told are empty. I am tired of everything I have been doing. Being alone is something I relish, and it darkens me, saddens me. Everything I thought I had.

And it is my memory that is also tired. I don't ache, and this numb, unguided feeling is even worse than being solitary. I don't think of old lovers, the idea of sex doesn't appetise me, my love for Deni the only thing that removes me from gray thoughts and is also the furthest affection I can contain in my body, in my bones, in my heart, in my soul, in my mind.

I relate to nothing, and our letters are scarce because of it.

And if I feel so desperate, so afraid, at a cusp, why do I not want to be touched, to be felt, to be explored. Intelligent conversation. To be stirred.

Maybe there is nothing of me than this skin. Maybe, like my desert, I am just ashes and sand and bone. The wind has ground me down.

In a shaman frame of mind, she sat before the oval mirror looking at herself. Before her on the vanity sat a single black Crow feather. A point of mystery to the Songbird. It was hers, and it was not.

"Take it. It is whatever you want it to mean", Scottie had said, and she had twirled it in her fingertips, taken aback, and unsure why. Days and days ago.

Now, it innocently, rocked by a draught. She took it and pierced it's pliant velvety spine and strung it upon a silver cord, which she looped across the edge of her mirror.

It was symbolic of understandings reached, uncertainties washed away and an ability to fly true.

She did not wonder of it's mystery anymore. She saw through.

The very cause was perhaps the most interesting point. As the Sandman had ruminated, "He gave you a feather, not a ribbon". But even that she did not question, nor would she ask. A gift was a gift, and this was hers.