The hunger was eating her future first. She would forget why she came. Then she would forget how to leave. Then she would forget that she had ever existed at all.
Outside the mountain, the rivers run forward. The crops taste like honey. And the children dream of a woman with bee-sting scars and hawk feathers in her hair, sitting on a throne of antlers, smiling at the dark. suima princess
She sang of a princess who had no army but her scars. She sang of a hunger that was not evil, only broken—a god that had been born wrong, with a mouth but no mother, a throne but no kinship. And then she made the hunger an offer it could not refuse. The hunger was eating her future first