a mess of these old themes

An ache so deep it lives in her bloodstream, as she walks the strange, newly emerged land. She'd known Boreas like the back of her hand, intimately, deeply. The lands that she'd been born to, abandoned in, bruised on, and broken by... the trail by fire that she'd walked and conquered. But where did it leave her? Alone, under a red sky, with more questions than answers. It didn't take a genius to figure out that her return would be rocky but this? This is... something else. Something far more grave than she could have anticipated.

Not alone for long. A large man fading from the shadows, joining her with a greeting that's not unfriendly. Put your hackles down, he's not trying to be a dick-- right. The strangeness of the entire thing has Hazel on edge. It seemed warranted, given the circumstances, but she rearranges her defensive posture into something more neutral as the man nears. "Dunno yet... it's not good, whatever it is." Even if that much was obvious, it's about as far as she's gotten. "How long has this been going on? I just returned and everything was.... like this." Not her usual eloquent self, forgive her.

As the breeze shifts and she can smell him, her heart skips a beat. Hazel knows the scent of the woods, those woods like she knows her own mind. "You're from the Armada." An observation, her face stoic, though there's a little tremor in her voice. "I-- you know Spider?" a more careful observation, as she tries to assemble her thoughts. Heart rattling in her chest, trying to put together a coherent thought. After everything had crumbled in her hands, would they even want to see her? Was she going to resort to asking a stranger in the middle of a hellscape how her only child was doing?

Hazel, The General