There was blood in the snow, the night sky recoiled from sight as the flames stalked ever closer biting at its heals. Marina held her bother Davidian in her arms, fragile, soft, a chrysalis of innocence that had started to shed, where the unconscious Davidian, head rolled to one side looked as if all his burdens had finally been laid to rest. A backdrop of rage, hate and broken things framed armoured figure as it stepped closer, the Broken threw itself at its back shattering around him, like the wave upon rocks.

There was something in the limping silhouette that brought Marina to tears, beneath the armour she sensed nothing but an emptiness unlike anything she ever thought possible, as if the body asked the mind ‘Where have you gone?’

Marina reached out and touched it, it’s intensity filled her, a question, an answer and loss, and then it began to burn, swelling from her core an eternity of pain proliferated though her. She screamed…

and continued to as she jolted up in her “bed”, blade already in hand and the furs now soaked in sweat, it was the same every night, the same memory, the same pain and the same sweat matted hair. The blade was a relatively recent addition, but had turned out to be a useful reflex on more than one occasion. However tonight it failed to deflect the fox pelt that smacked Marina square in the face. She lets its momentum knock her head back down as a familiar voice muttered from the other side of the room.

‘go to sleep Mre.’ Davidian muffled from underneath his own bedding.