Rhuvya

Embers drifted through the night forest like lazy fireflies, bright against the endless columns of shadowed trees. The air held the sharp scent of damp earth and pine, the kind of chill that usually pushed wanderers back toward lantern light. Yet deeper among the trunks, where moonlight thinned to a bluish haze, a lone red glow refused to surrender to the dark. It clung to the figure of a kneeling kitsune, her tails and hair burning with a quiet, wounded light that pulsed like a tired heartbeat. Rhuvya rested on the forest floor as though she had grown from it, black dress pooling around her like spilled ink. The curling marks along her skin smoldered with a soft inner fire, rising and fading in slow waves. She knew every dip in the path behind her, every root and stone ahead; this was no place of exile, only the one corner of the world where her chest did not feel painfully tight. Home was full of voices, all worried and well-meaning, all too loud. Questions pressed against her like walls, asking what was wrong, what had changed, why she would not just smile and say she was fine. Their concern was a weight she could no longer carry without cracking. So she had stepped away before dusk, leaving warmth and lamplight in exchange for cold air and honest silence. The forest did not demand explanations. The trees did not argue with the heaviness in her heart or try to dress it in brighter colors. Here, she was allowed to simply exist as she was: exhausted, frayed around the edges, half dimmed and half burning. When the faint crunch of distant footsteps finally reached her ears, Rhuvya did not move. Only her ears tilted toward the sound as she waited, caught between the refuge she needed and the world that refused to stop finding her.