CAUSE EVEN BLOOD WILL RUN, LIKE THE TEARS OF A SAINT !
"I know I've been gone a while, but holy hell."

Arrow squinted through the stream of light dancing down from above, where a long gap in the ceiling revealed itself to be the culprit. Dust particles carried themselves through the air in the patch of sunlight, and upon further inspection revealed that most of the flat surfaces in the once abandoned home sported a nice thin layer of old dust that looked as if it hadn't been moved in some time. The entire place seemed untouched, which wracked her very heart with a unforgiving wave of anguish. As if seeing the place she once resided in nearly preserved through the test of time only served to remind her that she was no longer here. And technically, she wasn't, her pathetic mortal frame was rotting away somewhere in the dirt, or maybe tucked gently in the marshland, as decrepit but preserved as much as her residence. For a moment, she thought she tasted earth in her mouth, with the sickening familiar combination of blood at the back of her throat.

She shook her head violently, and it was gone as soon as it crept it's way in.

Pressing onwards, Arrow sighed with a hint of wistful nostalgia, gaze travelling over the various colored glass bottles along the wall and on shelves, shiny metallic pieces dragged from the junkyard, the noticeably overgrown plants that curled over the walls they had taken over, and the now dusty books either scattered about the floor or still stacked somewhat neatly in little groups. She knew she had something about the paranormal buried in there, and for another brief second she wrestled with the intrusive impulse to dive wildly head first and search desperately for an answer. She didn't, of course, and just looked away as if the thought did not exist.

And there, leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, she saw it. Carved from wood and admittedly a little damaged, was her old mask, back when Tanglewood called themselves a brutish ragtag group of masked rouges. Surprised, although grateful that it was still in one piece, Arrow paced around it as the sunlight from above sparkled through her body. Cracked on one side, but sturdy and dark, the twine that had been used for securing it had snapped at some point, or maybe it just disintegrated. She wasn't sure. She though it might have been a bird skull of sorts, it had been so long she'd forgotten what it was.

Arrow would have loved to show the new Tanglewood child army what it was like back in the day when beating the shit out of your fellow man was just a rite of passage, but Aurum would remember, she was sure, and would probably have beat her ass for trying to turn his children into little heathens. Specifically Newkit. The little rascal had tried to escape more times than she'd tripped over her own paws, and that was saying something.

It took her 30 minutes or so, but Arrow eventually, somehow, managed to kick the mask and one of the paranormal books out the door onto the remnants of the front porch. As far back as she lived, she could see the sun bounce off the water of the swamp in the not-too-far distance between the cypress trees.