She was far overdue hatching again, she'd woken up some time ago, but had blatantly refused to move an inch, not at all interested in breaking free from this place, to go back out into the world and suffer without Mother. No, she was just going to stay here. Stay here and be alone because that was the only thing that mattered - she no longer had a Mother.

She felt sick. She felt weak. She felt like one touch would shatter her. She wondered if she could even break out of here if she wanted to. She needed to find Mother again. She needed to return to her because she hadn't felt like this when she was with Her. She had felt nothing but love and affection, nothing but her grace and the comfort of a family to surround her. Now all she felt was cold, despite the warmth of her chrysalis, and loneliness. No thoughts in her head, no touches of pride or love to keep her calm. Nothing...nothing but silence.

She wanted to stay here forever. To wither away into nothing. Without Mother, what was life? What did it mean, what was she supposed to do? What was she to become? But she didn't have a chance to return to her dark musings - her time in the chrysalis was up. The shell, too weak to sustain her any longer, cracked without her consent and dumped her on the ground, the amniotic fluids expelling from her lungs as she reflexively took in a deep breath.

She flopped onto the wet ground of Cetus, exactly where she'd been slammed to the ground and utterly broken. Right in the middle of where the war had happened and all she was faced with...was the tree. The den that Mother had lived within, where she had lived with Pallas and Howl and all the others. The tree. It was gone. All that was left there was a sinkhole. An open pit filled with muddy swamp water with littered shards of burnt wood drifting on its surface.

So that was it then. Mother was gone. The family was gone. Her home was gone. Emotion clogged up her throat and she sniffled, descending quickly into sobs and she curled up tighter in on herself, feeling so utterly alone in the world, trembling as she released her sorrows. She wanted her Mother back.