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To stop looking for Solvi, even briefly, breaks her heart. It doesn’t help that the lack of light only feels like an echo of Ylva’s situation- a daughter she had wanted to protect, had been so relieved to find again, snatched away. And Bryn…Bryn had disappeared too, like her daughter.

Both of them were probably so scared- Solvi with whatever may have happened, and Bryn with the arrival of the blood moon. They were probably looking for her like she was looking for them, but…but for once, Ylva was at a loss of what to do. Encouraging her daughter’s escape had been action, and everything that followed had been, too. This was new. This time, she felt almost helpless, wandering in the dark in the hopes she’d somehow stumble across one of them again.

The crows break her from her thoughts, too many to count, all shrieking, and for a moment she thinks her heart may plummet, worry driven by her own thoughts.

And beneath all that, something else. Something quiet and drowned out by the crows to the point that Ylva isn’t sure she heard it at all. Something almost like a sob, coming from the shadows. Against her better judgement, she waits, ears perked, to see if she can hear anything else. And against her better judgement, she finally calls out.

Hello?