She had walked and wandered for miles further than her eyes could see. Elodie had little idea of where she was going or what method of madness compelled her footsteps forward, but nonetheless, she continued with a thin line drawn silently along her lips.

For all its beauty, the North was barren in her eyes—a world composed of nothing more than frigid air and relentless ice. A world in which sat poised and ready for the Quinn’s next misstep; like a predator readying for its fill in the moonlight, she knew only the North would wish to consume her.

And so she had left before danger, or worse, wandered up toward her doorstep and truly, irrevocably tore her asunder.

But as the darkened night bore down on her, the light of the moon a mere sliver in the sky, it had not been the fear of the shadows that riddled her bones with unease—rather, the sound of a warbled cry.

She halted in her steps, a head drawn from a weary place before her chest as a nose would faintly twitch. An unfamiliar and rouge scent reached her senses as she momentarily considered fleeing.

She could run, turn back now, and perhaps never come face-to-face with whatever darkness lingered in the shadows…yet her conscience told her otherwise.

The cries that whispered through the dreary evening were of heartache and loss—a broken song that made Elodie’s own heart tense and quiver in the space within her chest. Whoever they were, they were in pain, and Elodie certainly knew the loneliness that accompanied such suffering.

Far before her rational mind could tell her no, Elodie crept forward—her paws light against the winter-kissed earth as a heterochromatic gaze swept along the growing evening. Hello? She called out gently as though her voice were composed of velvet and moss. Are you alright…out there? She hesitantly asked as she continued her slow approach, her attention rapt along the darkness that consumed the world around her.

Perhaps she could not see them. But certainly, Elodie could hear them.

Now, she just needed to locate them.