Zara came to with a jolt. The sun was high in the sky and she was covered in cold nightmare sweat, she also seemed to have thrown up at some point, the ground around her had the acrid smell of stomach acid and bile also her hair was matted and she could see chunks of the jerky strip she had before… whatever happened. She must have rolled away from the spot she passed out on because she was nestled in some roots of a tree. Thank the stars she had, Zara didn’t think she could have gotten to her feet otherwise. Sluggishly, as if racked with a horrible hangover and still somehow drunk, she missed the course bark of the deciduous tree a couple of times before finding purchase and pulling herself up. As she stood leaning against the tree she felt numbness travel from her limbs to her chest and a mist filled her mind and she felt weightless for an infinite moment before the fog and numbness faded being replaced by weakness, thirst, hunger and a general disgust for her own sorry state. She again turned to the brook that led her here and, step by unsteady step, Zara returned to the bank she stepped on what must have been hours before.

The fact she hadn’t made any progress from here was crushing. She did everything right, she wanted to run away from the moment she was tricked into willingly accompanying the monsters to the castle, yet here she was. Not a day into her freedom and her body betrayed her. She knelt at the edge of the brook and stared at its surface, at herself. She didn’t recognise the girl looking back at her, wrong, the woman looking back at her. She was no girl, He made sure of that as soon as she stepped into the castle. The child fat of her face was gone now, she hadn’t noticed that until now. She hadn’t noticed how much she resembled Mother either. She touched her sharp jaw and traced it to her chin. Her olive skin lost most of its tone and was bordering on resembling the ladies of the visiting courts, fair and dainty, she hated what they did to her, and fortunately the dirt and sweat darkened her complexion. At least they couldn’t take her white hair from her, not that they tried, it was one of the reasons she caught His eye. Despite that she clung to the hair colour as something that showed her defiance to conforming to the castles wishes, no matter how insignificant it was. Now it just reminded her of why she was here. She reached into the brook with both hands and started to wash herself as best she could without fully committing to bathing herself.

As she did so she found a lock of her hair kept annoyingly getting into her right eye. After a few unsuccessful attempts to blow the irritating lock out of the way her blood boiled suddenly, without warning she was furious at the irritating peace of hair that wouldn’t leave her alone and do what the rest of her hear did and get out of her way. She was furious, so furious she reached into her pack and brandished her hunting knife at the lock. The old blade cut through the strands of her spider silk white hair almost without resistance.

She screamed her furry as she threw the lock into the stream and then despondently watched it float into the stream; a feeling of relief overcame her. Then a thought occurred to her. If one lock felt this good how would it feel to lose the rest of her mid-back long hair? She decided to find out. She collected all of her hair in one hand and rested her knife beneath it, she started to push and drag the edge against her hair and the satisfaction as strand after strand separated from one another was damn near complete. When her fist full of white hair came unstuck from her head she almost lost her balance from pulling so hard. She examined her clenched fist. The hair now dragged on the ground and some of it was falling into the stream. She knelt there a while. Blankly staring at her fist full of hair. It was dirty she noted. But she couldn’t throw it into the brook like the first lock, someone could notice it and follow it back to her.

She stood quickly and put away her knife. Then with new purpose she strode away from the bank and strode to the tree she woke up next to. Pulling the litter and dirt from a crook of roots she soon made a hole big enough to bury the hair. She covered the hole as best she could then stomped on the resulting mound of dirt for good measure.

When she was done she swayed for Stars know what time on her feet as the hunger, hidden from her by her anger, returned. She took out another stale strip of dried jerky and shoved it into her mouth. Then she took another and did the same. As she reached for another she noticed that only another strip remained and only a handful of hard tack was left in her pack. “Dark damn this” she sighed aloud. She hefted her pack, located the Dragon spine scraping the sky over the woods and started her trek again.

“At least I’m moving in the right direction finally.”

She said to no one.