_I made this,_ she thinks, lightly feeling the smattering of faded beads adorning the toe. _We made these._ She reaches out in sunset-mist towards the matching but superior shoe. _I…ran…in these? Arrived in these?_ Ahkŭ feels the ghosts of her tears' migratory patterns on her face begin to cool. She tries to turn to look at her grandmother but her lightly pluming form dissipates, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke from the once-ignited ember of her memory. Exhaustion hits her, and Ahkŭ struggles to coalesce thoughts into words: _Who **was** I?_

🙜

A piece completed in July 2019. The lineart was done traditionallyin October 2018 and then the piece scanned to be finished digitally. This is a story piece for my oc Ahkŭ, a nature spirit who was once a young girl that fled her home to head into the mountains, wearing shoes she and her huichi beaded together. In this piece, she has just found her stash of belongings from before she was transformed. She touches a shoe with her paw, and her memories come flooding back.