The auburn girl decorated in green crystals wandered from the Elder Tree, searching for another living soul. She stared around with amber orbs, tail swishing. She was a huge direwolf. Her stilts carried her over the green grass, green to match her tsavorite. The Krustallos lady was coming up on the boundaries of Dawnshire. She sniffed the air, nerves all aflutter as she made her way closer to where this pack lay.
Isaveth was running. Running from what she had done, what she had made herself. Blood haunted Isaveth’s dreams; screams echoed in her head during her waking hours, driving her crazy. Guilt and fear and shame pressed in on the tsavorite princess at all hours, along with a recurring theme of relief. She was free. She had escaped her arranged marriage, her life. No more sexism. No more danger or feelin useless, being useless except for bearing children. She wanted love and children, but not like that - not in a place where she would have to watch her sons become womanizing monsters and her daughters become tools for society. Starfall was a legend in Isaveth’s home, but she had never thought she’d be here. Safe, secure. Free . . . except for her mother’s screech haunting her memory.
All she really remembered of her escape was the very end - her mother, the Queen of Lusia, screeching her despair as she watched her daughter flee into an open, but rapidly closing, portal. Pools of blood leaking everywhere. Bodies lying askew.
She howled in. She wanted to crumple herself up until she forgot, forgot it all. She was a monster, barely worthy of love. Seeing others happy scared her; bright colors made her grumble inside. Isaveth’s happiness had fled with her captivity.

“I look inside myself & see my heart is black.”