Help

The day had been a nightmare. When they’d first arrived at the seemingly abandoned camp, she had thought Flicker was being overly cautious with her suggestions to hide, to send a lone scout ahead of everyone else while they sat, idle. It had taken everything in her not to dash the plan and walk boldly into the open to investigate. After all, she’d already spent so much time of her life sitting, waiting. . .doing nothing.
 
But she had restrained herself, allowing caution to prevail. Though no amount of caution could have prepared them for the inevitable encounter. And it was inevitable, she knew in hindsight. Unless they had left immediately, they were going to be set upon by those horrid insectile monsters. There’d been no avoiding it.
 
At least they’d had a fighting chance. She shuddered thinking about the poor men that had not been so lucky. She shuddered thinking about Flicker disappearing into the earth, caught in that thing’s deathly embrace. And she nearly wept as she remembered the feeling of helplessness that had cast dark shadows in her as she only stood, stupid with surprise, just watching.
 
It was a feeling that persisted from that moment to the present. She had done so little for these people that she had quickly grown to consider her friends. After all, she had nothing, no one else. Sister Garaele had confirmed it. They were all gone, decayed with time. As she should’ve been.
 
But she wasn’t. She was here and now. Seeing Keth and Flicker talk quietly to one another, she gave them privacy and found some of her own in a pale patch of faded sunlight. There she knelt and bowed her head, folding her hands beneath her chin. She closed her eyes to pray. This time of day was not Lathander’s strongest, but it didn’t matter. Her heart was hurting and she needed her god’s comfort. If he would offer it. If he still favored her. She wondered if he did. She wondered if she had spent too long underground with that creature, buried and hidden from the Morninglord’s light, so that Lathander forgot she was there. Out of sight out of mind.
 
And why would he smile upon her? She had failed. True, it was due to circumstance as much as anything, but also true that Ebondeath was free. She had failed. They all had failed. Was her baldness the sign of Lathander’s disapproval? Her hair had always been her pride, her mantle, proof that she was beloved by the sun god. Now it was gone. What other meaning could it be?
 
“When I walk in shadow, thy light guides me. When my heart turns cold, thy light warms me. When I am weak, thy light fills me with strength,” she whispered. “Lathander, shine thy light upon me that I may know-” her throat tightened with suppressed emotion, “that I have not failed thee. That thou will forgive me if I have. Shine thy light and thy mercy upon me, O Morninglord, that I may feel the love of a new dawn.”
 
And on she went until it was time to sleep, oblivious to the world unless directly disturbed by it. When asked, she would, of course, volunteer to take the final watch, that she might sit and observe the new dawn, and offer more prayers to her Morninglord.