Catherine -
The day Catherine's father confessed their ruin felt like a clock striking midnight—ending one life and ushering in another, colder one.
Once, they had lived like characters in a story meant only for the fortunate. Their grand stone manor stood on the bluffs above the port, where gulls wheeled against skies the color of pale pewter and the air always smelled faintly of brine and spice. In spring, roses spilled over the garden walls in a crimson tide; in winter, the halls blazed with firelight and laughter. Catherine and her six siblings had rooms of their own, sunlight pouring through high windows onto polished floors. They wore silks and satins, rode horses sleek as river stones, and played in gardens perfumed with lavender and mint.
Their father, a merchant of some renown, returned from voyages with trunks of treasures—amber beads from the North, silk as fine as mist, carved ivory from far-off coasts. Their mother, a lady of the Queen's court, hosted glittering soirées where music floated from the ballroom into the gardens, and Catherine would hide behind marble columns just to watch the candlelight sparkle against crystal goblets and the jeweled throats of the guests.
But joy is a fragile thing. When their mother died, grief gnawed at the edges of everything.
It was as though a tether had snapped inside her father. He began to wager not only coin but judgment, pouring gold into reckless ventures, chasing fortunes like a man drowning chases air. Wine dulled his grief, dice gave him false hope. Catherine learned, years later, that the last blow came when he sent his final three ships to the same distant port—a merchant's folly. None returned.
The ruin was quiet at first, like the muffled crack of ice beneath one's feet. The silks stayed in their wardrobes, the fires still burned in the hearths. But the servants began to leave. The horses were sold. Rooms were shut up one by one. And the gardens—once her mother's pride—grew wild and unkempt, the roses climbing like they meant to strangle the walls.
From the Northern Forest –
From the high ridge, he scented it—the tang of endings. Loss carried on the wind, threaded with the salt of the sea and the faint, fading sweetness of roses. He did not yet know her name, but the forest whispered it to him all the same. A ripple passed through the pack-bond that tied him to his land. Somewhere in the stone city by the harbor, a story was beginning, and it would end here, in his shadowed domain.
Catherine -
The day they left the manor, it felt less like a move and more like a burial.
Catherine's three elder sisters wept openly as they folded their few remaining dresses into travel cases, their fine silk gowns already sold. Her brothers moved with stiff, clipped motions, securing the trunks to the waiting carriage. Leather straps creaked. The scent of dust and mothballs clung to their clothes—a poor trade for the perfume of their old lives.
Their father, once a man whose voice could still a room, sat slumped on the carriage bench. The sharp tang of brandy clung to him, threading through the cold morning air. His hands, once quick to count coin and sign ledgers, lay limp in his lap. Catherine caught the flicker of shame in his eyes before he looked away. Moments after they lurched into motion, he sagged against the seat and surrendered to unconsciousness.
The carriage was far too small for seven grown children and their broken patriarch. They sat hip to hip, shoulders pressed, the jolt of every rut in the road passing through all of them. The city streets gave way to winding country lanes, the smell of the sea fading into the green, damp scent of earth. Beyond the rolling fields, a line of dark forest pressed close to the horizon, its treetops shifting like the backs of animals in the wind.
Their new home waited somewhere among those hills—a modest farmhouse their father had leased, the last thing the creditors had left untouched. Catherine tried to imagine a life there, but the memory of marble floors and candlelit corridors clung stubbornly to her mind.
From the Forest –
From a rise above the road, he caught the scent first. Horses. Iron. Cloth worn thin from too many uses. But beneath it, fainter, was something that didn't belong to the others—something that made his instincts lift their head and listen.
He followed the trail with his eyes as the carriage rattled along the road that skirted the edge of his territory. The forest shifted around him, as if the wind itself leaned closer. He didn't know her face, but already the scent of her was a hook lodged deep. She would pass the border soon, and once she did, the forest would not give her back so easily.
Catherine -
The farmhouse squatted at the edge of a field, its stone chimney leaning as though burdened by too many winters. A thin line of smoke curled into the late afternoon air, carrying the scent of peat and something faintly bitter. Beyond it, the forest pressed close—its dark pines crowding together like sentinels keeping their own counsel.
George was the one to tell them the truth. His voice was low, but the wind carried it clearly to Catherine as they stood beside the carriage.
"It's all we have now. The house, the land, the stock. After this… there's nothing left."
The words seemed to hang between them, heavier than the gray clouds rolling in from the west.
She had thought herself ready for the change. She was wrong. The city's constant thrum, the salt on the air, the glow of lamplight on wet cobblestones—all gone. In their place: the raw scent of turned earth, the pungent sting of manure, and the distant rustle of the forest.
Inside, the farmhouse was small enough that she could stand in the kitchen and see nearly every corner. The walls bore the marks of years—scratches from chairs, pale squares where pictures had once hung. It was tidy but plain, with no gleam of polished silver or rich tapestries to soften the space.
They began their new life that day. Catherine traded her silks for coarse skirts, her evenings for hours bent over soil or stirring heavy pots. The skin of her palms grew rough, nails chipped and rimmed with dirt. Blisters became calluses. At night, she fell into bed with her muscles aching in ways she'd never imagined.
Yet there was a strange clarity here. The air was sharper, cleaner. The stars—when the clouds allowed—burned closer, as if she could almost reach them. And always, beyond the last fencepost, the forest waited.
From the Forest –
They had crossed the old boundary, though no one had told them it was there.
From the shadows between the pines, he watched the new arrivals unload their meager possessions. The wind curled around him, thick with the scents of soil, hay, woodsmoke—and her. She moved with the careful grace of someone trying not to break, but the tremor of exhaustion clung to her every motion.
He did not yet know what she was to him. Only that her presence tugged at something deep in his bones, something as old as the forest itself. He turned away before the urge to step closer overcame him, fading back into the dark where the trees swallowed all sound.