She expected some sort of fulfilment.
Instead she felt completely empty.
Why didn't that hollow part of her, the aching emptiness that had kept her awake at nights for so many years, why didn't it feel any smaller? Instead it was a new pain. Just as raw.
Maybe she would never heal. Maybe she should head up into the mountains and lay down with the rest of her people. Their time was passed, it was time for a new people to rise up. She was just one broken woman who had abandoned her people. There was no revival, no resurrection.
Soft snoring on either side of her, fabric partitions keeping her separate from her hosts. The orcs here, they were far more civilized than her own people, for all they shared many traditions and habits. They had language and literature. Her own people hadn't even had a written language, just the traditional stories.
Oral tradition, almost all of it was gone now. Because she had been a selfish child.
But if she'd been less selfish, she'd be dead too.
So yes, maybe it was more than time for her people to leave this living world.
Kaj dressed in silence, only the slide of fabric, leather, and fur against skin making whispers of noise. She was at least trained well as a hunter, nobody should notice her leave. She'd even learned how to quietly operate the monstrous wooden doors the orcs preferred to proper yurts, with their fabric door flaps.
She was at the walls before very long at all. Getting over the wall without notice was child's play. It actually made her quietly worried for the village. But it wasn't her concern, she had a goal and would accomplish it as the last thing she did. Perhaps then the pain would stop choking her and she could finally just sleep.
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