Summer is upon us now, though. The sun is deep into the afternoon, glaring down until I can feel the heat in my very bones. It feels as if I am thawing from an endless winter as I feast upon the narrow body of a hare; it had been an easy kill, a gift from the forests I am sure. It hits the bottom of my stomach with a satisfying gurgle, a sound I am sure echoes through my ribs and out into the world as I stand hobbled over its body, peeling flesh from bone until the stark white of its structure come to the surface. I stare into them, the ribs and the scapula, small and fragile as they are. I had been gentle in my killing, taking only the blood from its throat and yet I stare into cracks and fractures, small and twisted that make their way through several of its ribs. It had not been me. I had been gentle.

I stare so long into them, my ears twisting back and forth to catch wind of those whispers as the bleak whites of my own eyes graze across the white of bone. Cracks, fissures, bends and breaks, healed and broken all the same.

"Like us... like us."

I observe them further, leaning my nose into them as I suck in the scent of blood and earth. Taviora has been healing, like those within it. Tobias took, and others threaten like those oh so fragile creases in the bone. I wonder, though, when it will break. All bones break. All creatures break. What of us? Till I know the answer, I stand beneath the sun as a ghost, attempting to uncover the stories within the forest's gift.