#taerne

She looks up, hand digging into the dirt for a connection, feeling the boundary agreement tremble through her bones. 

Her second thought is that this is a woman alone, coming out of the woods that Akeri is here to protect and seal. 

Akeri stands, hand still tight around dirt. 

The boundary agreement snaps tight at the low stone wall and the woman (corpse) stops with it, swaying on her feet like a drunk. 

She is drained, bleached white. Her hair is fine and tangled and just as pale, a glowing aura clumped with dirt. 

She is naked, Akeri realises. Naked and covered in blood, splattered across fine lines traced over her skin in black ink that looks to still be wet. 

She is staring at Akeri, her face smooth and expressionless. Her eyes dart from Akeri’s horns to her hooves to her tail, and her hand tightens around something pressed behind her arm. 

“We have an agreement,” Akeri breaks the silence, pitching her voice clear, “the woods and I. Do you seek to break it?” 

The woman (corpse sings the trees, reborn whispers the stones, stolen cries the earth) blinks at her. “You talk with the trees?” Her voice is rough, hoarse and croaking and almost broken. “You can hear what they say about what – about me?” 

Akeri frowns. 

There’s a storm front coming in, thick and dark over the woods. The wind tugs leaves from the bed of the woods, sends them flurrying around the woman and over the wall to rest in Akeri’s garden. 

Akeri steps forward. “Do you have a name?” The wind cuts through her layers, sinking the chill into her bones. 

The woman, naked as she is, doesn’t seem to be affected. Her swaying has faded out and now she stands solidly at the wall. 

“Taerne,” she says (forgotten murmurs the trees, abandoned grumbles the stones, murdered mumbles the earth). “Just - Taerne.” She eyes Akeri. “Nothing more.”