When the stars were first coming out and the bonfire at the overlook was just being built, the wind had been keen, a hungry voice in the rocks like the world itself longing for something it could never have. The air was calm now, but for Cerrynt it felt no less turbulent, for while the air might be at rest, her feet, light as clouds, flung her through it as keenly as if the wind still raced heedlessly towards the horizon.
She had been running at full tilt for several hours now, enough that the moon had crested the sky and was coming back down, and still she was not tired. Grass and stones went by in a blur. She had a rhythm to her motion that she could give no name to; it did not feel like she was running, pushing herself one step after the next, but rather it was as if she was simply forever falling forward, and her feet merely guided her perpetual plummet.
Had she been going somewhere, she might have crossed eight leagues in this time, or more, but she had nowhere to go. As unwelcome as the Eryr-lûth had felt to her that night, she did not choose to get very far from Tros Hynt, so she went this way, and then that way, and then doubled back, crossed her own trail, curved around and back, and ran furiously getting nowhere. The purpose of this sprint was not to reach a destination, since she had no destinations; not to follow a path, for no path was clear before her. It was simply a way to burn off the fire in her blood. Calm never came easy to her, but the nearest she came to calm was when she was running, or swimming, or climbing. Perpetually plummeting.
If she focused on each footfall -- not on finding it, for her feet fell, as she fell, always forward, perpetual plummet, all of it finding itself as easily as the current of a river finding its way downstream -- but just on paying attention to each stride, this one and then the next and then the next, she could put aside everything else. The fear that, while she was away, Trindân was making an enemy of the Caru-lûth and her tribe would suffer, or even be destroyed. That in Tros Hynt she felt like she had no place, no purpose, and very little welcome. That she had entrusted the spirits to help her find vigor and craft enough to reclaim her tribe, and they had cast her aimless and adrift, giving their voice only to the dark witch who used it solely to mock her. That of the people she had hoped would help her, she had received nothing but dismissal of her own resolve -- the son of the brenin had gone so far as to tell her that her cause was pointless and should be set aside for a war, his war, against an enemy that she had never seen, that had never touched her clan's lands. That saving her clan, her father, her own place amongst the people and lands she cared about so deeply, these were all distractions from the true intent of the spirits that just happened to align with the axe he wishes to grind--
The wind, rushing past in her perpetual plummet, stopped abruptly and was driven out of her. She pulled herself up, sore and bruised, from the jumbled tumble she'd taken, the rhythm of her run lost. The bandage around her left arm began to seep again; though Danhadlen had bound it well, it seemed determined to bleed far more than the shallowness of the cut she'd made, to sacrifice blood to the fire, could explain, and the jostling of her stumble had started it up again, throbbing with a dull pain. Perhaps using the witch's knife had been an even worse idea than it seemed at the time; the knife was probably ensorcelled to make cuts that would never stop bleeding.
She sat up and looked around. There was nothing in all the world about her but stones and plains, a few cows lowing somewhere over a hill, a fox out looking for ground-creatures. She knew which way led to Tros Hynt; from here she could point, without thinking about it, towards the homes of the Dwrgi-lûth, towards the Isen, towards a particular chestnut tree she sometimes climbed, or a dozen other places in these hills and valleys. She could set out for any one of them. She did not need to even return to Tros Hynt. All that she'd left there was a small bag with some fishing tackle, a whetstone, a few other similar things, and she could get by without them. She wouldn't need to be there to find whether Gryffudd was going to send her away, if she'd already sent herself away, by her own choice. Depriving him of the power he had to disapprove of her.
As she pulled herself to her feet, all at once, she felt as if stones had been piled into her clothes, or perhaps inside her bones. Dawn was not far off, and she had either been carrying wood, arguing with people, bleeding, or running, almost since the previous dawn. It was finally catching up with her.
Danhadlen intended to show her how to ride horses today, if she hadn't been sent away by then.
At a slow, unhurried lope, she started on her way back to Tros Hynt.
