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+--- Thread: AW the end of the road (/showthread.php?tid=11513)
the end of the road - Ghenaya - 5/7/2026
hunger.
hunger was everything.
there was nothing she wouldn't do for a mouthful — meat was the goal, but by now starling had filled her stomach with all the water she could find, or grass pulled up in chunks. flowers, most recently. roots of plants she didn't know the name of, starchy things that were hard to chew, but she swallowed anyway.
her energy waned; there were signs of living things worth chasing, but the girl could only look and watch, she did not have anything to spare.
the ichorwood might have provided something if she'd reached it earlier.
instead, this might be where her story ends.
RE: the end of the road - Journey - 5/7/2026
There was a girl in the blood forest. Dark and thin, far too thin that she knew the girl might not survive much longer. The long winter had been hard on her surely. It had on them all, especially the loners. The forgotten.
Journey takes a few paces closer, slow, but filled with purpose. She woofs out to her, wondering if she might still have the strength in herself to turn and look.
RE: the end of the road - Ghenaya - 5/7/2026
she looks - a zombie, hear head swinging as a slow pendulum. she does not see the wolf at first despite it being white against dark; her swing overshoots, and after a second to catch up to her periphery, she realizes it and looks properly at them.
is that a spirit? is that her ghost?
they've gotten closer; did she walk, or did they float? she feels like she's floating...
starling takes a step and then another, mouth opening as if to speak, but her tongue lolls out instead.
dry, cracked - she's thought about chewing it off a few times now. meat is meat.
RE: the end of the road - Journey - 5/8/2026
skill: hunter
Exhaustion has done a number on her senses. The journeyman woods again, low, to try and center the young girl's attention. When she is able to focus on Journey and as Journey draws nearer, she realized that perhaps she is already too late. Likely too weak to travel to the foothills of Northfall, for she did not think they girl had it in her to travel the hours it might take.
Stay. I am huntress. I will feed you.If the girl wandered off, she did not think it would be far. As quickly as Journey came, she left, swift on her feet to the closest great lake of this forest. This red forest was teeming with water, including the coast. Hunting rabbits, weasel and gopher had a higher chance of failure. Fishing she could so far more swiftly.
Still, it was an hour or two before she came back. She held two fish by the tails- a decent sized carp and a smaller bluegill and sat them to the forest floor, woofing again for the dark coated teen.
RE: the end of the road - Ghenaya - 5/13/2026
the spirit spoke, and then it was gone.
starling's head pounded; she had a perpetual pain there between her ears, down her neck, her eyes - all parts of her above the shoulders had become a persistent ache, preventing sleep.
she ducked towards the soil and picked at the grass, like a ruminant.
her steps began again; ambulatory because of the angle of the earth rather than any desire to really move, so yes, she was not in the same place when the ghost returned to her.
in those hours the girl did not get very far at all, and in fact collapsed, to tuck herself together as a pile of bones and flesh.
the fish laid before her, it took a moment before she saw it - smelled it - wanted it.
watery eyes that did not focus, lingering there upon the bluegill; then meekly, grabbling it and trying to eat.
RE: the end of the road - Journey - 5/18/2026
skill: hunter
The journeyman was quiet as the girl weakly began to try and eat. She did her best not to stare and instead kept herself busy. She would peel the skin and scale from the larger fish, tearing at flaky pieces of fish which she would switch between swallowing herself (if they fell apart into broken bits in her mouth) and tossing into the teen's direction to eat freely without fighting scale and bone. (Not that they were not fully capable of eating those too)
The journeyman was not paticularly one to pry but she was a curious woman. Many had been displaced from the recent world events and even before that wolves were known to 'blip' into this existence lost and all their own. Where had she come from?
Where are your people?It was a start and to the point just as such. She wouldn't survive much longer on her own, even with the offerings given to her this day.
RE: the end of the road - Ghenaya - 5/29/2026
the fish meat tasted wrong. too salty. it was soft in places that red meat was not.
the blood taste was different too, almost sulfuric.
she did not complain though, there was no indication she knew how to do that. it was food and that was what she needed. it was food, and she did not have to gather it. a time would come later when starling might think of the debt owed, but for now she was desperate.
she ate. she did not speak. it took a long time, but she ate it all.
she was chewing awkwardly at the tail-fin with her molars, when the stranger asked her question. her posture did not change. her eyes remained forward upon the discards of her meal, and around the tail (her cheek a little stretched) she muttered,
no people.
giving up for now upon her chewing, she released the fin and let it sit between her wrists where she had propped it. she licked her lips, tasting the salt left behind. a breath huffed from her nose and she stared down at it, then glanced at the woman, her gaze piercing.
you? hmn... have people?there was no inflection to show this was a question. her voice is too low to hear, most likely.
RE: the end of the road - Journey - 6/1/2026
No people. She was not lost then, if she had no one which she looked for, no place where home and family lie. Just a girl, young and on her own. Surely she had a mother, once, but felt now it did not matter if the girl gave no claim of it.
Her ginger ears perked then, barely hearing the whisper of words on the teenager's breath. Her stare was a pale, cold one. Like ice. Where Journey's own was vibrant of deep summer grasses seen far and few between in the north.
Many people.She speaks simply at first, before her need to share more compelled her, as it often did.
Our land is directly north of this blood forest in the mountains which are Northfall.She takes a breath then, emerald eyes casting around the deep of red that this forest held. Vibrant colors of never-ending autumn.
There were people who claimed this forest once. They have come to unite with us now.