Grace chews and swallows, feeling the strength and heat from the meat coursing through her ancient body and invigorating her senses. After finishing her meal and picking scraps from between her teeth with long nails she walks along the valley floor, knowing where she is heading but in no rush to get there. Something draws her to the Nephilim. She will never speak with him. She could kill him, but he is not a Kin she brought here by choice, and to do so would be to admit that she made mistakes. Besides, she likes him where he is. He sought to command and control her. She enjoys turning the tables on the fool.

She remembers Mallian from the Time, a young creature, as impetuous then as now. They are all still young to her, like children, playthings, hers to control... she wishes... she thinks she might have...

The fairy sighs deeply and takes hold of her mind. It drifts so much now, old thing that it is. Sometimes it wanders so far that she worries she might never drag it back. On occasion she fears that much of it has already escaped the gravity of her being, and that the mind she has left is a congregation of random memories, thought shards, and glimpses of things she once knew. She feels herself slipping away. This place is an attempt to hold onto everything she has left, keep herself together. But it is not perfect.

Summiting a small rise, she looks down on one of the reasons for its imperfections.

Mallian the Nephilim is on the valley floor, arms and legs held fast as they have been since the moment she cast him down. Some time has passed since that confrontation, but Grace does not know how long, nor does she care. The passage of time no longer holds much meaning for her.

He is thin and gaunt, his once-strong body withered. She has never eaten of him. She did not bring him here, and to take a bite of his treacherous flesh would be to honour him too much. Better to see him trapped down there, suffering in the knowledge that everything he dreamt of has come to nothing.

Elsewhere in the Fold, not too far from here, the human lives in a cave. Sometimes he feeds the Nephilim, and Grace finds amusement in the strange bond that has grown between the two of them. She lets them have that.

She could kill them both, but their blood would taint the soil. For now she is happy to ignore them most of the time. They are no threat to her.

Nothing is a threat to her. Her mind is too great...

My mind is in shards.

She is too strong, too sure of her own strength and future...

I’m weaker than I have ever been.

She has everything she wants in here with her...

Except her. I saw fairy in her.