not dead yet

Morgawr spent her days in a haze. Her wounds had healed, but she would never be what she once was; her face and neck were horrifically disfigured -- in her opinion, though many would not disagree -- and she could not speak, not even in a whisper. Completely mute. She had never been particularly talkative, but she missed having the option. Strangely, this was the first time in her life that she felt really and completely alone. None of her daydreams had prepared her for this, and it was hard to even look to the characters she had made for guidance as she had as a child. How could she be brave or smart or kind? How could she live like this?

And yet she did live, despite all odds. She began to see the situation differently -- she had indeed died in the jaws of that monster, and she had been reborn, not quite alive like everyone else was, but resolutely not dead either. She was undead. And it was clear why: all silent, terrifying ghosts -- for that was what she was now, clearly -- in stories stayed around because they had unfinished business. She had been returned to the land of the living to exact her vengeance -- her justice -- on both her murderer and life itself for allowing her to die. Her living self was too soft, too lazy, too weak to live properly, but now that she was dead, Morgawr had nothing left to lose. For how could you kill a walking corpse?

She went out to the woods, not those where she had died but close enough. Though she didn't shiver, or feel afraid, or feel anything for that matter. That wasn't alarming, because ghosts didn't have feelings.

She pulled a pink Lady's Slipper flower from the ground and would take it to the nearest wolf she could find and ask what it did. Maybe she'd get lucky. Maybe she'd scare some innocent sap. That would be funny, she thought.

Speech