Open Post: A human who was merely being.

It's been a few days since the arrival of the temporary visitors and Tress has become a wraith.

Her routine is established enough that she's sticking to the fundamentals, but out of rote instead of any sort of enthusiasm. She wakes, she tries to meditate (unsuccessfully, with Crow's poisoned words echoing in her memory and eluding any attempt to clear them), wordlessly brushes Fenyes (she obviously notices the new horse but does not know the new horse), gets food from the kitchen (pre-prepared things she finds in the refrigerator or cupboards, as she cannot muster up the will to cook), and retreats to her room. Her workshop notably remains unused. Crow was there, and although Tress knows she won't be back (and that she was right, Tress would trade places in a heartbeat), she can't bring herself to go back and step into where she'd been, where the undeniable situation had been laid out in plain and simple words.

On such rare occasion that she manages to pass someone in the hall, she offers a smile of greeting that comes nowhere near reaching her eyes, as rote as everything else is.

She's fallen into this before and knows she's doing it again, but a new-found resolve is what brought her out of it before, and she'd had that, to no effect, so that clearly won't do it again.

She has no idea what will.