Enter Cézanne.Clouds roamed the open sky, a patchwork of white and pessimistic gray against their canvas of blue. The noon sun offered little warmth in the throes of autumn; the cold draft snatched away whatever heat it carried. She woke to frost in the pale mornings, with her breath steaming into the air. The life of a lone wolf did not suit her, there were no sisters to curl up against at night—she was practical, not sentimental. She could've brought any of them along, to keep her back warm when they settled down to sleep, or to hunt for her while she searched high and low for traces of a brother she hardly remembered.But no. Cézanne had gone alone. After being cooped up with her sisters for years, the bold recklessness of undertaking such a task alone, at her age, had appealed to her free spirit and iron will. She would accomplish what Calder never had. She was no queen to be coddled, but a feral beast whose fangs still bit hard.. but if there was one thing she had learned in her two months afoot, it was that the world was much larger than she thought.
Cézanne dropped her eyes from the sky. The wind buffeted her fur and rolled the sad, decayed remains of wilderflowers over, tumbling them about, and they danced listlessly to the commands. They were pitiful things, blackened by frost and bent, dead as can be, simply waiting for the snow to cover them. Perhaps in spring and summer this field would be glorious, with all these flowers stretching from horizon to horizon, but little of their beauty had remained when she arrived here. And in this field of death, of monuments of things past, she had found a suitable den, a place to curl up when the harsh wind whipped the warmth from her body—soft earthen walls to trap the heat while she slept.
She didn't know why she lingered, not just in this wasteland of last summer's flowers, but in this corner of the world. She had traveled far, into the sunrise, day by day pounding away at invisible game trails and following faded scents, but how do you find someone you haven't met in years, when there is no end in sight to the land you cross? Maybe he had even shed his name. Maybe he had died, out here. Yet her hope—if you could even call it that— never faded; her conviction remained bone-hard, a flame to keep her out here, gorging on rabbits and missing the taste of deer.This place had held her attention, though, trapping her for days. She could smell many things: prey, wolf, coyote and lynx... packs. She couldn't simply roam the world and hope to stumble over him. She needed method to her madness, and this seemed as good a place as any to start.And so, Cézanne begins to walk through the dead flowers, to see what today will bring her.