Akenna sat at the worktable trying her best to stitch together a pair of slippers while her fox Phalyn slept next to her stool. It was all she could to recently to keep her mind from the things she had endured recently. Her mind wandered to the brutal beating she had received at the hands of a Grimswarm interrogator. Slipping she jabbed herself with her needle bringing herself back to the reality of the small workshop she was working in. She sighed and gazed out the window as she paused briefly.

She hadn’t slept well most nights since she watched the flock terrorize the town of Mist Harbor. The last time she felt at peace is when Turonas held her as she slept. The sight of Turonas in the dimness of the room, his soft, strong voice telling her as she awoke from her reoccurring dream of having her throat slit in Eorgina’s temple garden, that he was with her and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She had believed him and drifted back into the velvety caress of sleep. Since then, though, she spent her nights here at the worktable working to the point of sheer exhaustion to keep the horrors of the last several weeks from invading her thoughts.

Her father had always told her that dwelling on that which was terrible and wrong in the world would never change it. Life, he said, would never be perfect, people will hurt you, the world will not be kind, and you can’t always expect that your trust will never be betrayed. The last time he had seen her, shortly after her husband had died, her heart drowned in her sorrow and she had gone back the forest, the same day she had buried her beloved, he had reminded her:

“My dove you cannot let the world poison your heart. You must let your heart reflect the world you wish to see.”

She had tried; tried so very hard to remember and practice that thinking, but the fiery anger in her heart for those who had given her to an Arktai, her hatred for not only the Flock but those who shunned her as she struggled to find a place in the militia. Lastly, the newly deep-seated rage and resentment for the Grimswarm had constricted around her heart. She was tired of being pushed, shunned and abused.

Even now she was failing as she sat there at the worktable; the sigils inked on her left palm flashed brightly and canvas in her hand began to smolder, her eyes flashed with a dim, red glow as the air around her sizzled with the force of her anger made elemental.

She was a wild-elf of the Wyrdeep, it was time to show them all she would no longer remain tame.