A/N: I always found the character of Moira, the hagraven briefly featured in Sanguine's quest A Night to Remember, a deeply tragic figure. A non-hostile hagraven, who's hidden herself away in isolation and loneliness, and on top of all that is made the butt of one of Sanguine's jokes? I felt incredibly sorry for her, and when I wrote her into my longfic, the character lodged herself firmly into my head and I felt compelled to write a piece exploring how she might have ended up in the awful situation in which we find her. In hindsight, this may have been a greater cruelty than just leaving her alone.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this little folktale-style backstory for Moira the hagraven, set long before the events of Skyrim. Be warned: this is not a happy tale.
Sun kisses the tops of the Druadachs. The sharp-spice of juniper hangs heavy about the crowns of hoary shrublike trees, while hoglets snuffle at the roots with the eager optimism of the very young. Overhead twin hawks wheel in a private dance to which only the wind knows the steps; so high that from the ground they appear as nothing more than specks in the eye, imperfections against the two-toned tapestry of the sky which vanish after a single blink.
Down in the river valley, clear-cold water lapping against a pair of weathered knees, crouches the maiden Moira. She sees not the hogs nor the hawks, notices not the scent of juniper. The sun burns the back of her neck, but this, too, is beyond her notice. Tear-clouded eyes gaze into a woven net without so much as a glint of silvered scale, and there is only one thing she thinks of; only one thing she knows, with all the certainty of a boulder rolling downhill.
She is worthless.
She is worthless, and has always been worthless, and will always be worthless.
For the third day Moira returns to the clan with no fish in her net. Shame burns hot in her belly, which turns cold and sickening when she must recount her failure to her sisters. They have the twin-magic, marked at birth to become the clan's wise-women, and will not suffer their younger sibling's shortcomings.
"You are weak," says Petra, who was born first and must therefore be first in all things. "Even in this task fit only for children you disappoint us."
"Our mother should have drowned you as a babe, as we told her many times." That one is Melka, whose heart is as cold as the magics she wields.
"I am sorry, sisters," says Moira. "The Karth is unpredictable. Perhaps tomorrow there will be fish."
It is a weak excuse, and Petra and Melka know this just as well as Moira does. As one they rise from their seats under the canopy of hog's-leather, and as one they toss their auburn hair over their shoulders. Moira cringes, though she knows it will only make their anger all the more terrible.
"You hunt like a child, fish like a child, make excuses like a child," says Petra. "And so a child you shall be."
Melka points at Moira. "You will cut your skirt above your knees and braid your hair in two. At meals you will sit with the other children, at night you will sleep with the other children, and as a child you will defer to the clan's adults at all times. This you will do until you can prove that you are a woman of the Reach, worthy of a claim to our blood, rather than a snivelling little girl."
"Yes, sisters," says Moira in a whisper. "I thank you for your mercy."
"You mistake us," says Melka, whose voice is hard as flint. "Were it not for the oath made to our mother I would have killed you by my own hand years ago. Go now, before I forget that oath."
Moira flees, leaving the two wise-women wondering how it was that the pox could have taken their mother and brother, who were strong and quick as slaughterfish, yet left them with the burden of a sister such as she. A sister who is meek and soft in a land which is hard; a rabbit amidst a people of wolves.
Thus does Moira begin her second childhood as a maiden of twenty winters and twenty summers; but for the decree of her own flesh and blood a woman grown. She moves her possessions back into the children's tent she last set foot in five years ago, and she braids her hair and she cuts her skirts that all in the clan may know her disgrace. The children mock her and call her names, and those whom she once called friend command her to fetch this and carry that, and beat her if she is not quick enough. They show no mercy and they feel no pity. This is the will of the wise-women, and besides, the Reach is a hard land who breeds hard people. To suffer weakness would be to make the clan weak, and there is nothing worse in the eyes of the great spirits or in the eyes of the Reachfolk themselves.
And so the maiden Moira lives as the child Moira and endures her people's scorn. The children's meals of fruit and oats taste ashen in her mouth, and each night she falls asleep in the corner of the children's tent under a cloud of sour humiliation and bitter despair. By day she broods alone, for she cannot bear to join the children's lessons in hunting and fishing and the names of all things, and she is not permitted to take part in any adult pastimes. Moira realises then the trap her sisters have fashioned for her; for how is she to prove her worth as a woman when all such tasks are denied to her? How can she show she is strong when she must obey any command given to her or be punished further? She decides that Petra and Melka mean for her to suffer either until she exiles herself from the clan's lands, or until she gives in to shame and despair and throws herself from the top of the redoubt to drown in the dark pool far below.
She does not leave and she does not drown, but each day her punishment becomes harder to bear. Each day when she can stand the humiliation no longer she seeks out her favourite hollow overlooking the Karth River, and she looks down at the water, and she weeps. She weeps for herself and because of herself; because she is not strong of arm or quick of leg or fierce of heart, and because she is too weak even to endure that which she deserves without giving in to shameful tears.
Moira thinks that none know of the secret place where she can escape her disgrace in solitude, but unknown to her there is one who has crept after her trail from the very first day, watching the weeping woman from the shadows of juniper bushes and wondering what to do. He is named Pert, an orphaned boy of ten, and after a week of silent vigils he gathers enough courage to approach Moira as she crouches in the hollow with knees drawn to her chest.
"Hello," says Pert. "Would you like to see something wonderful?" He holds one hand to his breast, a secret treasure tucked safely inside: a pebble he found the day before, whose colours change in the sunlight.
Moira startles, then shrieks. "How did you find this place, boy? Get away, before I beat you!"
Both Moira and Pert know she will do no such thing, but Pert scuttles away nonetheless, his precious stone still clutched to his heart.
The next day Pert comes to the hollow once more. This time he holds cupped between his two hands a small lizard, grass-green with bright black eyes, which scampered onto the boy's leg while he was sitting in the sun.
"Hello," he says to Moira, who is staring into the river with empty eyes. "Would you like to see something wonderful?"
This time she does not startle. Instead she turns her red-rimmed empty eyes upon him.
"I know who you are," she says. "You are Pert son of Artpert, and you are pitiful and weak. You cannot shoot even a rabbit and you cry when the hogs are slaughtered. Go away. I want nothing to do with you."
Pert leaves without a word, and Moira is left feeling emptier than before he arrived.
He comes again the next day, carrying the long wing-feather of a hawk. Once again she tells him to leave. As he turns away, however, she cannot stop herself from calling after him.
"Why did you seek me out? Why do you keep returning, though I turn you away?"
The answer is that Pert is a child whose heart overflows with compassion, and who cannot bear to see any creature in pain without trying to deliver whatever comfort he can provide. More, he senses in Moira a kinship, and his lonely soul reaches towards hers like a moth drawn to the flame of a candle. These are the true reasons, and they are reasons Moira might understand were he to speak them; but Pert is a young boy, and all he understands himself is that it makes him sad to see her weep.
"I don't know," he says.
"Well, do not come back tomorrow," says Moira.
But he does come back, and this time he brings a comb of honey still warm and oozing sticky-sweet, and this time Moira allows him to show her his treasure. They sit together overlooking the racing river and they eat honey in silence until their teeth are coated with wax and their tongues are heavy with its rich sweetness.
"The other children will treat you even worse if you are seen with me," says Moira, as she watches the river run foamy-white over the rapids.
"I don't mind," says Pert.
Moira doubts his words, but Pert speaks the truth. He does not mind the jeers or the teasing or the contempt; he does not mind that most in the clan think him weak and soft. He does not mind because a spirit speaks to him in his dreams and tells him all will be well. The spirit tells him that his kindness is a type of strength, and that compassion does not make him weak. She tells him that while his people may not understand this, other people outside the Reach clans do, and that one day he will be among people who will value his heart more than his arm. He will do great things, she tells him, precisely because he is kind; he must aspire to remain kind and to keep his heart open and full of love, no matter how he might be tested. And because she speaks in his dead mother's voice, Pert knows that the spirit speaks truly.
Each day Pert returns, each day with a new treasure, and soon Moira finds herself looking forward to those minutes, then hours, as the only moments of light in her days and nights of darkness. One day it is Moira who asks Pert whether he would like to see something wonderful. From then on each day she shows him another place in the Reach which is special to her: she shows him fields carpeted with flowers that scent the air so thickly Pert becomes woozy, and hidden glass-still ponds above which dragonflies dart like living jewels, and old abandoned mines where they hunt for traces of silver in the clinging darkness. Pert delights in each new discovery just as Moira herself unwillingly delights in the prizes Pert shares with her, and though she fights against becoming attached to the gentle boy-child with the curious eyes and ready smile, for the first time since her mother and brother died she does not feel entirely alone.
"Why are you always so sad?" asks Pert. They are sitting side by side on the bank of a slow-running stream, where Moira remembers once seeing a family of water-rats. Moira hopes to catch a fat one to bring back to the clan, thinking that hunting even small prey may win her some reprieve; Pert simply wishes to see them dart and swim like furred fish.
"Are you stupid? I am sad because I am treated like a child, though I am a woman grown," says Moira. "I am sad because I am scorned and ridiculed by everyone I know, and because it seems my sisters do not plan to lift this punishment any time soon, perhaps ever." She does not wish to admit that it is also because deep in her heart she believes that everything the wise-women have said about her is true, and she is a failure among Reachfolk who deserves all the misery she receives.
"I'm not stupid," says Pert, wrinkling his nose. "But I think you might be. Why would you want to be a grown-up? Grown-ups have to hunt and fight and work. Right now you can spend all day playing and exploring, and nobody is trying to make you be someone you're not. That should make you happy, not sad."
"You are stupid," snarls Moira. "To be Reachfolk is to hunt and fight and work; to be strong and fierce and bold. To be otherwise is to be weak and soft and unworthy of our blood."
Pert remains composed. "That's not true. It doesn't make you weak to be kind, and it doesn't make you unworthy not to be good at fighting or hunting. Different people are strong and worthy in different kinds of ways."
Moira's anger flares hotter, and she leaps to her feet. "You are a stupid little boy, and you know nothing of the Reach. I was wrong ever to humour you," she says. She snatches up her gathering-pouch and stalks off, leaving Pert alone by the stream.
Pert watches her go with a clear gaze. He is glad Moira reacted how she did, for it was exactly how he himself reacted the first time the spirit spoke those very same words to him while he slept. His heart burning bright with love, he knows that in time Moira will come to believe them too, if he is only as patient with her as the spirit was with him.
After leaving Pert Moira does not return to the clan. Instead she chooses a direction at random and storms through the wild lands of the Reach, leaving swathes of long grass flattened in her passing. She does not understand why the boy's words inflamed her temper so. She does not realise that it is because were she to accept what he said as true, she would have to face the injustice of what was done to her by her own flesh and blood. Were she to believe what Pert told her, even for a moment, she would have to rethink everything she grew up knowing as surely as that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
It is easier for Moira to hate herself than to hate her people, and so she tells herself that the boy is a naive simpleton, made stupid by youth and weakness, and she was a fool herself ever to cherish his friendship. She has been wasting time humouring his childish fancies when she should be working to make herself stronger and fiercer and bolder, that she might be worthy to be called a Reachwoman once more.
It is with such dark thoughts swirling in her mind and heart that Moira finds herself on the outskirts of a small village, one of several non-clanfolk settlements dotted throughout the valleys of the Reach. Moira draws up short, suddenly uneasy. Though her own clan is not as hostile to outsiders as many others, she has dealt very little with those not of the clans, and she is frightened of what these strange people might be like. But it is nearing dusk, and she is tired and hungry, and the thought of trudging home to force down another meal of milky oats and sliced apple is more than she can bear; so she gathers her courage and nervously approaches a smiling woman she thinks looks both kind and pretty.
The woman is just as frightened of Moira as Moira is of her, for she has grown up hearing tales of savage clanfolk raiding villages the Reach over. But she feels sorry for the woman with the mournful eyes and the jagged skirt cut above her knees, and thinks to herself that someone so wretched probably could not raid the village if she wanted to. She points Moira towards a large wooden building she says is called an inn, where Moira can eat a meal, if she so chooses.
In front of the door Moira once again hesitates, her hand on the latch. Then she sees a young boy dart past through the gathering darkness with sandy hair just like Pert's, and she firms her resolve and opens the door, wanting to prove to herself that she is bold.
Oh, Moira! If only she had chosen that moment to turn back after all; if only she had listened to the secret corner of her heart whispering that she should find young Pert and tell him she is sorry. But Moira does not turn back, and she hardens her heart against compassion, and from the moment she steps over that threshold her fate is written; her doom is a certainty.
Inside the inn Moira is frightened and confused. It is too brightly lit, and the smells and sounds are strange and unfamiliar, and to one who has lived her whole life beneath the sun and stars it feels as though she is penned into a space which is far too closed. She is about to turn on her heel and leave when her eyes are caught by a man sitting on the opposite side of the room. He has dark hair and laughing eyes, and when he looks at Moira her heart lurches in her breast, and she walks towards him without remembering that only moments ago she decided to leave. She is caught as surely as a bitterling in a net, for though she does not know it, the man-shaped creature smiling at her and beckoning with his gaze is no man at all. It is the Daedric Prince Sanguine, whose power is in indulgence of that which should be denied, and whose domain lies in the dark desires of mortals' hearts.
"What a fine evening it is," says Sanguine, "when one is graced with such unexpected and pleasant company." He rises from his seat, and he takes Moira's hand and kisses it.
She is flustered and flattered, and Sanguine knows this, just as he knew that she would be here this night. He did not choose this inn, or this maiden, by happenstance.
"You flatter me," says Moira, and Sanguine does not deny it; he merely smiles more widely, and Moira's heart beats more quickly, and when Sanguine gestures at the seat opposite his, she sits down. He introduces himself as Sam, and offers to buy her a drink. To her surprise, she accepts.
Moira has little head for alcohol, and her tongue grows expansive under sour-sweet mead and the Daedra's careful attentions. She does not notice either influence; all she knows is that the man Sam makes her feel interesting and clever, and for a time she forgets to hate herself.
That changes when Sanguine asks, as casually as if the answer were of no consequence to him, "And what brings you to the inn tonight, my lovely Moira?"
Moira's breath catches in her chest, and her words catch in her throat, and she wants to tell him that it is none of his concern; but instead she pours out her whole sorry tale to the man who is no man at all. Sanguine listens sympathetically, and he gasps and he nods in the correct places, though naturally he already knows everything of which she speaks. When she has finished talking he furrows his brow, as though having the thought for the first time.
"But of course, you have already thought of seeking the Reach-magic? That would certainly show to your clan that you are powerful and worthy of respect."
Moira frowns. "You speak of the ritual of transformation. That magic is forbidden, save to those wise-women who have passed the trials of the great spirits and been deemed worthy."
"Ahh, that is what is said, yes," says Sanguine. "But imagine how the clanfolk would receive a woman who is bold and brave and quick-thinking enough to seize the magic of her birthright on her own. Imagine how that woman would embody the spirit of the Reachfolk themselves, who are strong because they take what they want from those who are weaker and less deserving. Would that woman not be proving she had earned the blessing of the Reach-magic, purely by virtue of having taken it herself?"
Moira senses something is wrong with this argument, but with her head clouded by mead and self-loathing and the Daedra's glamour she cannot see what that might be. Instead, just as Sanguine planned, all she hears is that there is a way for her to win back her worth and become a powerful and respected sorceress, a leader among her people, in one fell swoop.
She is silent for several seconds. Sanguine waits, his unblinking eyes not leaving her face.
"But I do not know the ritual," says Moira, and with these words Sanguine knows he has her and the child both; the little boy-child who has been chosen by his enemy as her champion, and who must not be allowed to grow into a man.
He smiles yet more broadly, though it should not be possible. "I can teach you. Listen closely, Moira of the Reach."
And Sanguine relates to the maiden Moira each step of the ritual which will lead her to a transformation most vile; a ritual after which she will have traded away every part of what makes her human in exchange for magics powerful and unnatural. It is a magic the Reachfolk have claimed as their own, though it is not truly theirs, and they do not realise the true cost.
The knowledge settles into Moira's mind like a stone sinking into a pond. Though she will forget much of the night, this will remain, and later she will not wonder at how easy the choice was for her to make.
"How do you know of all this?" asks Moira afterwards, shaking away a little of the fog blanketing her mind. "Men are not permitted to learn of the details of this magic, and you do not even dress or speak like one who is of the clans. Where did you learn these secrets?"
Sanguine leans forward, and suddenly Moira cannot breathe. Her whole existence becomes the pair of nut-brown eyes which have latched onto her own, and her heart beats more quickly, though she does not know why.
"You are very beautiful, Moira," says Sanguine, reaching across the table to caress her cheek.
Moira's flesh is hot under his fingertips, and her own fingertips tingle, and she feels a sharp tug behind her navel. She has never before thought of herself as attractive, but at the words of the man-shaped creature opposite her whose eyes burn with something more than hunger, dark and inviting, she feels a stirring: a sudden awareness of a power she never knew she wielded. She forgets her questions.
Sanguine's hand moves to one of the braids hanging beside her ears. He undoes first one braid, then the other, and Moira's dark hair falls unbound around her shoulders in soft curls.
"Let me show you that you are no child, no matter what your sisters might say," says Sanguine in a low purr. "Let me guide you on your first steps towards becoming the woman you were always meant to be."
And Moira takes his hand, and he leads her outside, and on the springy Reach-grass under the gaze of the twin moons Moira passes from budding maidenhood to a woman in full flower. The next morning, when she wakes alone, she rises with a new sense of purpose and clarity. The man she knows only as Sam has shown her the path forward; a path she believes will lead her to everything she has ever wanted.
Moira returns to the clan, and she finds Pert, and she apologises. When he turns his sunny smile on her and shows her a fat-furry caterpillar he found on an apple tree she nearly loses her resolve, but as she did the day before she hardens her heart. She smiles, and she tells Pert she has a very special place to show him this day, and he gladly takes her hand and follows her through the grass waving in the summer breeze.
Up into the hills Moira leads Pert; up to the abandoned redoubt, with its weathered stones overgrown by mosses and lichens, and its unsettling stillness that drives even the animals away.
"This is exciting," says Pert, looking around him with awe. "I was always too scared to come up here by myself. You help me feel brave."
Moira refuses to dwell on the love and trust shining in the boy's voice; forces her heart to become as hard as flint, like the bones of the mountains themselves. She jeers in her head that the boy is stupid and weak, and that if he were stronger, less quick to trust, this would not be happening. He has brought this upon himself.
After an hour or more of climbing, by which time Pert's thin legs are heavy and aching, they arrive at the summit. The view over the Karth valley is spectacular, but Moira does not allow either Pert or herself to dwell on the vista. She turns her back on the canvas of brilliant green brushed with a ribbon of sparkling silver, and points to the enormous stone table which rests in front of a curving wall covered in strange scratchings.
"Do you know what this is?" asks Moira.
Pert examines the table and wall with bright eyes. "No. What are these markings on the wall? They look like they were made by claws."
"I do not know," says Moira. "I know nothing of the wall. But this table, it is special. It is a special site for our people, where for long generations past we have performed our sacred magics."
Pert's eyes widen, and he runs his small hands over the weathered carvings at its edges. He notices that there is some sort of dark stain at the centre, but thinks nothing of it.
Moira pulls steel and flint from her gathering-pouch, and begins to light the braziers around the corners of the table.
"What are you doing?" asks Pert.
"I thought we could play a game," says Moira. "Seeing as neither of us will ever be accomplished mages, I thought that while we are up here in this sacred place, we can pretend. We can pretend to be doing a ritual, like those in ancient times."
"All right," says Pert. "That sounds fun."
The braziers lit, Moira points at the table. "You climb on there, lie down in the centre and shut your eyes. I will pretend to do some magic. Then we can trade places."
"All right. Will you say some funny magic words?" says Pert. "I could make some up for you."
"There is no need," says Moira. "I have already come up with an incantation." Her voice is cold and distant, but Pert thinks it is only because of their quarrel the day before. He hopes this game will cheer her up.
Pert climbs onto the table, lies down on his back, and shuts his eyes. A small smile plays about his lips as he listens to Moira's incantation. It sounds very convincing, he thinks, and he hopes that he can come up with one just as good.
As Moira's voice rises he is tempted to peek through his lashes, but he promised he would not, and so he keeps his eyes firmly shut. He never sees Moira raise the black-edged blade stolen from the wise-women's tent, and he dies with his young heart filled even at the last moment with kindness, trust, and love.
Moira completes the ritual exactly as she was instructed by Sanguine. Fueled by Pert's lifeblood and the sacrifice of her humanity, the ancient magic wraps her tightly in its grasp. It seeps into her skin then sinks through her flesh and into her bones, and she screams as the magic changes her, spirit and body both, rearranging every part of her into a shape no mortal form was ever meant to take. But she is a true mortal no longer, and will have many centuries of cursed half-life in which to rue her choice; her failure.
She opens her eyes, which have changed from a soft hazel to an inky black. She examines her hands: her fingers have grown ghoulishly long, and are tipped with sharp talons, each as long as her human fingers used to be. Her forearms are unevenly feathered in a way which will never grant her flight, and when she lifts one foot she realises that they, too, have changed: her long, lean legs end in clawed birds' feet. Moira screeches her triumph to the heavens. No longer the maiden Moira or the woman Moira, she has become the hagraven Moira, a bird-witch of the Reach.
A small part of her screams that she has become a worse monster on the inside than on the out, but she pushes it away. After all, she thinks, why should she feel guilt or remorse? Pert was weak, and in killing him she has purged two weaklings from the clan: Pert and herself. She has proven she has the fierce heart and bold strength of a Reachwoman. She has sought out the ancient magic and made it her own. She tells herself that she has become everything her sisters wanted her to be and more, that she has become the woman she was always meant to be, and she forces herself to feel only joy and pride as she returns to the clan to collect the reward she is due.
When Moira arrives back at the settlement she is met with wary stares and hands straying to quivers and blades, for the River-Elk Clan has no bird-witches at present, and it is rare for those of other clans to travel with peaceful intent.
"Put your weapons away," says Moira. Her voice is also changed, and she speaks sharp and raspy, like a cawing crow. "It is I, Moira."
The clanfolk are unsure how to react, for how could meek, cowardly Moira have been granted the blessing of the great spirits? And yet they can think of no reason why a bird-witch would claim Moira's name otherwise.
One woman pushes her way to the front of the gathered crowd. She is a lean huntress of middle age, whose brown hair is threaded with silver like the earth of the Reach itself.
"But where is Pert?" she cries. "Where is my nephew, who you took with you this day?"
Moira sees the anguish in the woman's eyes, and hears the fear in her voice, and it is only now that she begins to realise she has made a terrible mistake. She did not expect any to mourn the boy, for she assumes the people of the clan to be cruel, as her sisters are to her. But Moira has underestimated not only the love which beats in the heart of even the most hardened of Reachfolk, but the deep taboo against hurting a child. The wolf will protect even the weakest of its offspring with savage abandon.
"Where is he?" repeats Pert's aunt, and the cry is taken up by the rest of the clanfolk. "Where is Pert? What has happened to Pert?"
Suddenly a hush settles over the clan, and the gathered crowd parts to admit Petra and Melka. The bones on the wise-women's robes rattle like the chattering of teeth, and their ceremonial staves thud dully against the ground as they walk. They address Moira with the authority granted to them by right of their birth, and their blood, and the magics they wield by the grace of the great spirits.
"You are truly Moira?" asks Petra.
"I am," says the hagraven.
"Where is the child Pert?" asks Melka.
"Dead," says the hagraven.
The silence of the clanfolk is as cold as the grave. Even the wind seems to hold its breath, but it is the false stillness that comes before a violent storm; a storm which now breaks on Moira as the clan erupts into furious shouting and yelling. The warriors beat their axes against their shields, the hunters and fishers and gatherers beat their feet against the ground, and every face wears a look of rage, of revulsion, of hate.
"Enough," says Petra.
The clan stills, and the wise-women draw themselves to their full height, and their fury is terrible to behold.
"To think that we believed you could not shame us, or yourself, any more deeply," snarls Petra.
"To think that we believed you would never sink so low," hisses Melka.
Moira hangs her head. She could destroy them, she knows; she could destroy the whole clan in mere moments, rain fire and death upon them all and leave nothing but a smoking ruin in her stead. But Moira has already lost enough; erred enough. It is only now, seeing the look in her sisters' eyes after telling them what she has done, that she understands how badly she was deceived and how unforgivably far she has fallen.
"Leave," they say in unison, lifting their staves aloft. "Leave, and never return. You are banished; exiled from the River-Elk Clan until the worlds of flesh and spirit become one once more."
Moira leaves. There is little else for her to do.
Rain falls heavy on the Druadachs. Juniper branches stretch claw-like towards the leaden sky, while hoglets burrow miserably into hollows at the roots, trying in vain to find shelter and warmth. No hawks wheel overhead. The sky is an unbroken flint-grey, and the warm golden sun nothing but a distant memory.
Claws clicking against slick cobblestones, her back turned on everything she has ever known, trudges the hag Moira. The rain slicks oil-dark feathers against her bony shoulders; disguises the tears spilling from oil-dark eyes onto craggy, sunken cheeks.
She hardly notices the downpour. She thinks not of where she is going or what she has left behind. Only one thought fills her mind; the one thing she has always known with soul-deep certainty, the truth she will never escape.
She is worthless.
She is worthless, and has always been worthless, and will always be worthless.