Frey knows she’s being foolish, knows she’s putting herself in danger, but once she gets moving, something in her stirs and she can’t stop herself. For some reason, she feels she must go this way. Something calls her. Behind her the men around the fire have started playing a drum, chanting a song, and the beat of it only pushes her onward. 

Memories of the night her brother died flit like shadows through her thoughts again. The chanting behind her echoes through the night air, lending the forest a mysterious, haunted fee;. The song is about the Pale, about how they first came to these lands some ninety years ago, and how the brave warriors who went to fight them were lost.

No one knew where they came from, only that they seemed to be the restless shades left behind by the dead, and that they were..hungry. Those lost to the Pale often enough became them, and so their numbers grew, and Frey’s people lived in fear. They didn’t move the village of course. Her people had been here for a thousand years, and if they died here, so be it. 

Frey wasn’t so sure though. She had always been impetuous, asking questions that made adults uncomfortable until they shushed her or gave her more chores. But surely they could see it too, couldn’t they? Their life here.. The way winters kept getting worse and worse. The limited resources, The Pale… it simply wasn’t sustainable.

All these thoughts swirl through Frey’s tired mind when the silence dawns on her... she can’t hear the drums anymore. She snaps suddenly alert. How far has she wandered? She turns to see that the glow of the fire is a pinprick behind her. Stupid, stupid girl! She scolds herself. Do you have a death wish? She turns to start back when she hears the rattling, tea kettle exhale of immaterial breath behind her, and fear shoots like silver through her veins.

Her heart becomes ice and her legs quiver. A trembling breath puffs from between her lips and she stands frozen in terror, staring ahead at the little tiny, distant firelight. It may as well be a star in the sky. It isn't until a white, translucent finger, far far too long to be natural, comes into her peripheral view, that she breaks.