If you have been in water, part of you remains there still.
Liffey stood in the river outside Herne, her gaze on the ruins in the distance. The water lapped around her legs and she paid it little attention, though she absent-mindedly attempted to scrub the dirt off of her arms. She replayed the previous day's events over and over in her mind, and the events of the day before, and the day before that. She felt distanced from her body, like it was operating without her moving it. She could hear herself joking with Sedryn, see herself eating meals, but Liffey did not feel as if she was controlling those actions.
She had fled Bree-land once before, when she was barely more than a girl. She felt much like she did then; small, weak, and cowering. Wading through the water, Liffey walked to the shore of the river where she could sit, and the water pooled around her waist. Looking down, she scrubbed harder at the mud and grime coated on her skin, rubbing until it was red and stinging. It took a moment for her to realize her eyes were stinging as well and she angrily tossed aside the rag she'd been using, not noticing and not caring that the river lazily swept it away. She cried into her hands and then beat her fists into the unyielding water, allowing herself to let everything back into her body.
When she was spent, when she had dressed in her robe, now raw and pink from scrubbing her skin clean, she lay on the shore of the river away from the water, watching the sky as the clouds rolled over it. Sedryn would grow worried if she did not return soon to camp and yet, Liffey laid in the grass and could not get up. But eventually she would rise, pushing herself to her feet to turn and gaze upon the ruins in the distance again. For a while, she considered walking to it, before deciding that it would take too long. Turning instead, she walked back up the slope to their camp.
