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Azzanadra would've strongly advised her otherwise if he'd known. She could picture him: stern and judgemental, warning her of the dangers of being discovered, of the vital need to lie low.
Lie low? Please. She'd done far more than enough of that in the past eternity. It was time to taste the fresh air again — she'd been constantly grappling against suffocation, despite being as attuned to the shadows as she was. Now she cast them out with starlight, shining from a thousand other worlds in this universe. Infinite expanse through which she could stretch her sight and mind, free from any confinement.
She extended her limbs, played with the malleability of her form, physically remembering the potential of her fluid body. She could blend perfectly with the sand if she wanted, or she could dissolve into the night. But further rediscovery of that could come later: for here and for now, she had to be herself. She needed to remember what it was like to exist in reality.
To Infernus with any worries! Any fool who found her could be disposed of in an instant. Perhaps less than an instant, if she wanted to truly feel alive.
She ran her fingers through the sand, feeling each grain's interaction with the surface of her form. She lifted some from the ground and watched their glittering fall in the starlight.
Once, the Mahjarrat had numbered that many. She hadn't even been there to see them fall.
Thinking on the remnants, time seemed so arbitrary and so cruel. Azzanadra had survived, and she would only ever have expected him to, but only by virtue of his imprisonment. Wahisietel had stayed out of the action, stayed alive by sole virtue of doing nothing. The eccentric Akthanakos? She hadn't expected him to survive decades, let alone millennia. To think that he was one of the few remaining of their kind...
When Palkeera, a traitor whose friendship could still never be forgotten — more fearsome and more awe-inspiring with the Shadow Realm than anyone save Sliske or, perhaps, herself — when she could fall in such an ignominious way...
There was no justice to this world. Had there ever been? She had been dragged from conflict to conflict on this accursed planet, driven through aeons of fatiguing wars, and for what? To spend thousands of years trapped and powerless, to emerge from that pitiful self-inflicted state to find that everything was gone?
Could she have survived that attack, without going into shameful retreat? Could she have changed the tide? Saved them? Saved something, for the love of Mah, at least someone?
The answer, without a doubt, was no. She knew the game too well — the pieces and their movements were far too grand an orchestration for any single one to change the course of the game. No, of course not. But if she could...
In the making of this unjust world, she had been small even to begin with... and even on top of that, she had been forced into uselessness for even a chance at survival. And now, when the dust had long since settled? Trindine was nothing but a tiny, lonely star in an empty sky.