She stands at the mouth of the maze, and remembers.
Oh, how many years now have passed, since she met Calliope in the land of Ravos? There had been a maze then, but the magic that shaped it had been feral and strange and so very hungry. This was something different; at least for now, it hid its teeth.
But Shrike had won that maze, and she was no more afraid of that one. It was something else that made a shiver wend its way down her skin, thoughts like biting flies.
At first she had thought that Novus was a world not so different than the one they had left - one they could impose their order upon, one that needed the kind of justice she and the lioness and the red man dealt. But while there were battles, and while there was blood, there was no home for the painted woman here. Not in the desert and not in the mountains and least of all in the cities, with their walls and their windows and their strange inhabitants.
Shrike misses the kingdom they had built in Ravos. She even misses the shifting lands of the Rift, no matter that she had met her death there, or that Calliope had had to spill her blood like rubies. Would she pay that price again?
Firelight flickers over those gathered, and the voice of the night queen rings like a bell over the evening, but Shrike listens to nothing but her own heartbeat, urging her onward.
When the world falls once more to stillness (what stillness is possible, in such a place, in such an event) she is one of the first to step forward, and allow herself to be swallowed up by the dark and verdant-smelling mouth of the maze. The beat of her heart remains even as she breathes in the deep scent of leaves, and when the paths split off before her Shrike chooses the fourth.
@Calliope
-fourth path-
don't do much these days
keep the wolves at bay
keep the wolves at bay
