mouse-in-the-ruins

Mouse never returned.

The rest of them—Stance and Tide and Ashes and Sparrow—always knew that it was a possibility. The ruins were dangerous, they knew that well enough; the unquiet dead, the ancient traps ...

But Mouse was supposed to be better.

She was the best of them.

Mouse creeps through the ruins on wary feet, careful of each step. There is so much here that she does not understand; so much that she has always been taught to fear. Etched plastic and fallen glass, the reaching bones of long-dead godlets—

Stillborn, or so she's always been told. Pathetic things reaching up towards the unattainable.

It doesn't matter to Mouse, not really; that was all long ago. All she needs to know is how to slip around whatever ancient hunger might yet linger within them—and that's so easy!