LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK, LIKE A HOLE IN YOUR HEAD

Winter had always been bittersweet. The animals took to their burrows after the first snow, preparing to wait out the winter in peaceful slumber. A few straggling songbirds sung in the trees until they, too, inevitably went south for the winter. She would have to find other ways to satiate her hunger for trophies while the animals she liked to hunt were all tucked away. Ehiyeh did not enjoy the lack of life around her, but the crispness and cleanliness of fresh snow had always delighted her. The cool, satisfying crunch of the substance underneath her pawpads gave her a certain sense of gratification. It was an unmarred surface of blanched white, it represented something entirely wholesome and pure. And when she walked upon it she felt relieved, as if the innocence of the snow cleansed her.

Ehiyeh still struggled to justify what she had done to the former alpha of Taviora. It had been an accident, certainly- but she had done nothing to help him. She had run away in fear, fear for what they might do to her, to her father or to Glorall. She had been no assassin, no rogue agent; she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet now she could not apologize, she could not make it up to Amoxtli and his family. The wound was old and certainly healing, and her father had covered it up for her with the expertise of a practiced liar. His story was easy to believe, so easy that she had almost replaced the real events with the fake ones in her head. Perhaps that would make it easier.

Regardless of that fact she had risen in the ranks slightly, a true huntress of the pack now. There was a small scar on her hind leg from where the ray had lashed its barb against her, and she thought it slightly ironic that her forays into poisoning had turned so harshly against her. She did not wish to think about this any longer, though- there was no use dwelling on things that couldn't be changed.

ehiyeh