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The wind is cold, biting as it rushes through the narrow path between trees. Heedless of the chill, the surrounding dark, and the wind-bent grasses, one elfess stands between two lines of trees south of Trollsbane, in an effectual covered pathway. Her hair is dark brown and blows wildly in the wind, strands catching across her cheeks, lashing at her pale skin. Her eyes are a soft green, lit from within, and they are squinted against the oncoming wind. Just beyond the tree-lined path of grasses she stands within, the Trolls Vein river snakes by, spray being driven up and out of it like an ocean wave in the gale. Looking up, the elfess cannot see beyond the canopy of leaves that changes and shifts beneath the elements' force. A heavy rain breaks suddenly, the blackened sky overhead letting loose in a torrent. Still, the elfess only stands outside with nothing but the trees for cover, her eyes fixed at once on everything and nothing.

This is your second chance. This is life after death. This is rebirth.

The words reverbrate within her mind, but they seem empty. She tries whispering them aloud instead.

"This is your second chance. This is life after death. This is rebirth."

Even when given voice, the words don't mean anything to her.

"Godless, " she whispers again, the train of thought completing itself only within the silence of her head.

Forsaken by all gods, never to have your prayers heard again. This is existance only within the sphere of the mortal world; and in several thousands of years, when it was done? Would she still be forsaken? If the gods did not exist for her and she did not exist for the gods, then what would happen when her body finally and truly expired? Would she simply become nothingness, simply disappear?

"And who could save you then, Arynne?" she whispered to herself, the words stolen away by the increasing gale. Strands of dark hair stuck to her face now, the cheekbones plastered with brown locks. "Who can save you from that terrible void within yourself?"

The gale continues as the moments become hours, and still the elfess doesn't move; the raindrops become fat, heavy snowflakes, sticking to her hair and settling like so many tiny flowers in the dark brown locks. The chill makes her skin break out in gooseflesh and still she doesn't leave the sanctuary of the darkened grove of trees.

Never have I felt so alone. The parts of me that made me what I am, are gone. Without the gods' blessing, without the ability to perform druid magic, I do not know how to be myself anymore.

Aloud, she whispers, "Even as each day passes, I feel my heart draining away and separating from me. I feel colder inside each day..."

Tears begin to trace their way down her face; tears for the horrible emptiness she feels withing her and without; tears because she knows she will never be the same again; tears because of all the things she knows, there is one truth that stands out the most:

The purity of her heart had been sacrificed for the very love that had destroyed it; The deeper she loved Dravish, the colder and darker her heart became to the rest of the world.

She knew this, yet this was not what made her cry.

What made her cry, was the fact that she knew this, and yet still chose her love for him over her love for the rest of the world, for all the gods, for the innocence her heart had once held.

He had become everything to her, and she had accepted, and so she wept for the darkness she knew she was giving in to within her heart, and for the fact that she was powerless to choose any other way.