#shadowheartrp

The dark welcomes her like a held breath finally released.

She kneels where the light fails, where stone and shadow blur into something mercifully indistinct. The sharp scent of camp- of cooking sausages and cheap wine, of sweaty companions and wet dog- finally smothered by the damp, earthy moss.

Silence presses in, thick and reverent. The kind Lady Shar teaches her to cherish. In the dark, there are no questions, no faces to read, no consequences. She lets her fingers curl against the cold floor and pretends the stillness is devotion, not avoidance.

But the silence does not obey her tonight.

She looks down at her hands and sees them as they are not. Blood slicks her palm, dark and sticky, caught beneath her nails. She doesn't remember spilling it, yet the guilt is intimate, familiar. She scrubs at her skin, frantic, dragging her hands against her leather vest, against the stone, as if the memory itself might peel away. Shar teaches that loss is a gift. Yet something in her recoils from the imagined stain, the weakness of caring who bleeds.

Her breath shakes and she bows her head.

If I still enough, quiet enough, perhaps the kinder part of me will starve.