Where the Owls Won't Live

The little village of black mages looks and feels like a dream.

Rows and rows of quaint little houses line up along a winding white picket fence. The thatch sticking out of the roof perfumes the air with a warm, heady scent that reminds Freya of the brief season between months of rain where the sun peeks out between the black clouds and Burmecia smells of something warm and alive. The life here is thick and sweet as honey, as the warm color of the mages' concerned eyes.

But Freya can not forget that beyond those white picket fences lies the rotting corpses of the trees that were cleared to make room in the densest part of the forest. She can not forget that beyond the dead trees are the live trees, arrayed like a row of bare pikes sprouting from the barren, silent earth.

And though the village is beautiful and the mages are sweet, Freya will never forget the warm and heady thatch smoldering over quaint, burning houses with their blackened picket fences, nor the smell of Cleyra's dead heartwood, nor the sickly yellow eyes of those sweet, sweet mages as they set fire to everything that Freya had come to love.

And worst of all, the smell of the desert, dry and dusty without a trace of rain.