At the end of the day, the world kept spinning even after it ended.

That was, perhaps, what she resented most.

Resentment was an old friend, almost family, these days. It settled right over her collarbones whenever she thought back to those kinder days, wrapped itself around her throat at the memory of Kit and Ela, stung at the back of her eyelids whenever she closed them and saw the silverwoods as they had been (growing, healthy, not on fire). Resentment was a familiar pain and most days she welcomed it, let the burn of it warm her aching bones when nothing else could.

It wasn't fair, and usually it was good to remember that.

But like all family, in the end, resentment became an inferno that she couldn't control. A pain that she couldn't manage.

When she stepped into the endless fields of charred husks and blackened tree stumps that remained of the silverwoods, she resented so much that her teeth ached. Khellis glanced at her, eyes flickering over her clenched jaw, and blessedly kept his mouth shut. She hated it, hated him. More than that, she hated the ashy flakes that now coated her memory of this place. But it was bearable, almost, until a flash of green caught her eye.

She dropped to her knees, sending up a puff of ash that clung on her tongue and stuck to her lashes. But it couldn't hide the damning evidence. A tiny leaf, pale green and impossibly fragile, curled against the charred lump of wood behind it.

The resentment that washed over her was so strong it unclenched her teeth and yanked a gasp from her throat.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. It wasn't anywhere near bearable. She leaped to her feet and kicked out at the stupid plant. A small geyser of ash and coal sprayed into the air when her foot made contact.

She screamed, then. Drove her heel down onto the plant again and again until it was gone and her entire lower body covered in black dust.

"What are you doing?" Khellis called (from a safe distance).

She swiped an ashy hand across her face, resented the tears that stung at her eyes.

"I--" her voice broke, and she hated herself with more force than she would have thought was left in her. "It's not fair," she rasped and dug her knuckles into her burning, watery eyes. "It's not fair and I hate it, so much."

Khellis nodded hastily. "It isn't. They just took your home and--"

"That's not what I'm angry about!" she snarled. He took a full step back at the ferocity in her voice. With fists clenched and fingernails digging into her palms, she tilted her head back and stared up, right at the bleeding sun.

"They took my home," she grit out. Deep breath. "And it doesn't even have the decency to stay broken." She gestured at the tiny green specks that littered the ground around them. "It looks at all this carnage, all this brutality, and it just keeps going. Like it never mattered. Like it never happened. In fifty years someone will stand there and they won't know. They won't see it burning, like I did."

"Natura non constristatur," Khellis muttered.

Nature is not saddened. Her world had burned, and the world didn't care.

The resentment blazed up, hotter than ever before. She knew, in that moment, that if it consumed her, the world wouldn't care either. It would just keep spinning and growing and bleeding like it always did.

"Let's go," she finally said with one last kick at the ground. "This place is depressing."