and then everything changed

She had to push down the roiling in her gut. If it didn't stop bubbling and writhing, she'd vomit... and she hadn't eaten in a few days. Bile did not taste good. Not that there was much lately accounting for taste, with all of the everything that had transpired.

Her aunt was missing. The school, everything she'd worked for, had seemed to crumble away in her absence. They had so few warriors and eager wolves were already prowling the borders. Filthy opportunists, she thought dismally as she skulked along towards the prairie. The weather matched her food: chilly, spitting cold rain. Winter had begun to give way to Spring in the ugliest of fashions. Everything was grey and wet, but somehow alive. I'm here. I'm alive. Fable stumbled over a rock half-sunken in mud and hissed as her toe caught the brunt of it. "I'm FINE!" she shouted to no one at all, her ego more hurt than anything else.

They'd shuttled the children off safely back home, but in the wake of it all, with the halls empty and the teachers whispering nervously and Theory still gone, she'd felt so powerless that she felt compelled to do something. Anything. And so she left. Maybe that made her the worst of them, but it felt like no one was doing anything! If she kept moving, maybe she could pick up Theory's scent. At least she'd keep her skills sharp on the way. Fable had gotten so used to fishing that she felt as if she was losing the knack for chasing prey on land and there was no time like the vast, empty present to sharpen her skills. She put her nose to the ground to pick up a scent, determined to find some way to pass the time until a new opportunity presented itself.