I step, and I wonder if the ground will swallow me.

I breathe, and wonder if the air will take my life.

I think, and follow well worn tracks in circles around my mind.

The trees of Yilerashu groan as I pass, the animals screech as if jeering, or cheering my passage. My forehead burns, I can feel the mark burnt forever into the flesh. Tears occasionally blur my vision, then clear as I stagger onward. I feel so hot, so hurt. I could just lie down and wait for the yileratra to tire and to kill me. But I know they wouldn't. Technically, they aren't allowed to until I've travelled beyond Yilerashu's borders.

My knives tempt me. I carry so very many with me. The hunting knife at my waist, the throwing knives across my chest; Any one of them could slit my throat. Or I could wander aimlessly until the predators of Yilerashu claim me, that would work, too. But that won't happen. The mark guarantees it. It is a one-way mark, a sign that goes deep into the heart of the thorn tree and says that a child of the Drakir is to leave and never to come back. Not even the thorn tree is so angry as to interfere in this. Nothing will threaten me.

So I walk, a nothingness. I do not raise the taniyu, and I do not ask for succour. Water and food are wordlessly provided, and the yileratra fade without speech or sound. I eat, and the food is alien to my mouth, it tastes of dirt and rot. The water feels oily and empty of life. Or perhaps that is merely a reflection of the polluted body they enter.

It is a long journey from Siuyushu to the borders of Yilerashu. At my lifeless, slackened trudge it takes two weeks. I have no greater perception of this time than that. My mind dances with the memories of Siuyushu, of the home I weep and pray for, of the commonality I at once betrayed and celebrated by my 'sacrifice'. But in this I betray it most of all, for indeed I am damned, and if I had known I would not have done as I did.

"Nayo."

It is the only word I say. I stop my lips sometimes with the flute, play with my eyes closed and streaming, or merely voice my frustration in screams. There will be much of this in the next few days, I imagine, as the other exiles are gradually released and fair even more poorly than I. Twins within, the effort to maintain dignity is momentous. And what worth of it? I have no dignity. I have nothing. But still I act as if I possess these things, carrying out the shadow steps of the life I once had, faking the actions of the life of a yileratra that no longer exists.

My tagayon matigai is nearing.

Or is it?

Time is gone to me. My body's keen sense of it has dissolved, my world has uprooted and rotted into mulch. The dream! The images in the hadayil! I saw it! I saw the forest die there. Yes, dead, dead to me, lost and gone away.

I claw pathetically at a trunk, as if I seek to climb, but a well-placed arrow - it lands exactly one inch away from my index finger, hits close enough that the arrow head cuts the flesh - reminds me that I have one role left, one last duty that the commonality demands.

From yileratra to yileratra I am passed, a ghostly walking figure growing wilder and wilder, blowing music that brings me to tears even as I play. Some times I spend hours sitting against a tree, just staring into the endless plains of the inner world, and there cavorting with the world of The Twins. So many possibilities.

"Nayo."

No. No, not Nayo.

I stand, and I carve her name into the trees. Somehow, some why, the action reminds me of why I am where I am, and how I came to be this way. It reminds me of the choice I took and why I did it and why, truthfully, I would do it again. I press on, torn in two by this revelation, finally and irrevocably riven down the center. I feel thought itself splitting into warring factions, and every time I seek to make sense of the world a hundred permutations are thrown up.

Yes, I can take that root, past the tree over those roots and around that hedge. But also I can go through the hedge. Ah, ah but that is nothing, for there are flowers to tread upon and tree trunks on which to swing. Nayo could have been with me. I didn't have to do this. I could be back at my shiyonayi, with my link, or even just in my hole in the tree.

"I'm sorry."

But there can be no reprieve, and my apology is not for what I did, but for my abject failure to bear it well. My apology is for proving that exile is what I deserved, even after the ramashi said such kind and needless things to me. We are doomed creatures if I am the best of us.

I sit slackly as new wounds are healed. My claws reek of my own blood. What did the yilanimas see in my eyes, I wonder? Do I seem stupid, now? Does it seem I've lost my senses, as one day Lulan surely shall, and does the yilanimas wonder if at any moment some endless spiel of babble and spit will spill forth from my open mouth? What fire might spring from my vacant eyes, too? Yes! A blazing forest! That would be the pyre for my end!

No.

No fire.

No end.

No end save for the one that each step brings closer.

The silence grows. But at the same time, I become aware of steadily more eyes upon me. I understand that there's a last part of this ritual. My quiver is empty, and ergo my bow is useless. But there will be arrows for it. This one time child of Siuyushu will not be sent out undefended. Yet I don't understand how, or why, or where it all comes together.

Then clarity. I see it. The end of Yilerashu, the precipice I walk toward.

There's a point where it stops. It's at the edge of my vision, a space between two trees that leads to no others, where the undergrowth ends and the light beyond is clear and unbroken. The gloom of Yilerashu ends completely, evaporated. I see long grass, but otherwise the ground beyond is flat. I swallow and stop moving forward.

My chest feels tight. The tears won't stop now, but I manage only to whimper. I dip my head, and accept my fate, and force my legs to walk. There's no point in delaying. Siuyushu blazes in my mind, the silver trunks dance behind my eyes, the pyrebugs fly in a beauteous swarm, their light reflects on a clear still pool.

The tangled growth of Yilerashu thins to nothing, recedes underneath my feet, and then I stand at the very brink, and I cling fearfully to the trunk of the final tree.

Beyond, I see flatness. There's the occasional tree, but there's no forest. No more. Nothing. Just grass, much of it not very long. I can see the birds flying overhead, twittering and chirping, but other than that familiar noise the land before me seems ominous and silent. There are no shiyonayi beyond here, no yilanida, no yileratra. One more step and the oath of the thorn tree ends, the brand takes effect, and I can never again turn back.

My foot won't do it. That one step ceases to be a mere step. It becomes in itself an enemy, a foe. The ground where my foot would rest seems poisonous and deadly. It marks the end of my reality. It is the end of me. I stare at it as I once stared at a snake that had wrapped about my arm and bared its fangs, I stare openmouthed at the horror and at my own weakness to have come to this horrid juncture. But then I remember the ramashi's words, and know that though there's nothing to be done, I will at least be remembered.

The earth is soft under my foot. The grass is green and marked with rabbit holes. I extend my claws, really just out of habit. I reach for branches that aren't there for the same reason, and find the sun to be eerily far away. It's not supposed to seem like that. It's meant to be dim down here. But it isn't.

I stumble after my second step. My head fills with a sudden pain, the brand burns anew, and I scream.

My vision blurs, and I stagger forward. Away from Yilerashu, away forever, with the songs of my one-time kin in my memory's ear and the blessings of the ramashi in my head, an ancient map spread before my mind's eye. I go forward because I have no other option, and I do not want to die, though I no longer know what it is I'm saving.

I'm brought up short by the sound of an arrow.

I straighten up and turn back, in time to see it in flight. Dark like a streaking raindrop, it whirrs toward me. I make no effort to move. I welcome it. I hope it will pierce my heart.

It digs into the ground at my feet. I look down at it. Then I realize what is to come.

The yileratra appear, dropping the taniyu and perching on the branches. I watch them draw arrows to their bows and loose them, and I raise my arms into the feather-shafted rain that falls around me. There are a handful of volleys, then nothing. Just the cries of the birds, the blowing of the wind, and the sight of the Drakir disappearing back into Yilerashu.

One by one I check the arrows, draw my hunting knife and cautiously cut them free of the earth. I add them to my quiver until it is full, and leave behind those shafts that broke. The handful that I cannot keep in the quiver I carry in hand, for I will need them. A mere league ahead and the Cyldon Territories begin. I wonder if Short and Brute will be waiting for me, and focus my eyes hard on the horizon. To look back would be to weep, to fall, and never again to rise.

So I walk, quiver full and arrows in hand, toward an alien sunset and through a bizarre flat land. I walk into the wind, and let its cold edge dry my tear-soaked face.