She celebrated her fifteenth birthday in the back of the goat pen, surrounded by friends. Washesblack had procured a cake, and Berrygreen and Brightfeather had each bought small gifts.

From Berrygreen, a long red feather. He swore it had fallen from a phoenix that had passed overhead once. From Brightfeather she received a leather belt with a bright brass buckle, to hold her trousers up.

She laughed as she fastened it around her waist. She was still skinny, and the others had insisted that she buy clothes slightly too big, so that she could grow into them, which meant that even new clothes hadn’t stopped her trousers from falling down.

The cake from Washesblack was heavy and sweet, and she savoured every bite. When she thought back to a year ago, it all seemed so far away. She had celebrated her birthday huddled in a shop doorway, watching the sheets of late-spring rain come down. She hadn’t managed to find any money that day, and had ended it alone and hungry.

Now here she was, surrounded by friends and goats, with money in her pockets and cake in her hands. It was strange how life ended up.

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For the first time in a long, long time, she wondered how her mum was doing. She would never find out, she didn’t intend to go back, but she did wonder…

There was a shout from the other side of the pen, and she finished cramming the rest of the cake into her mouth, wiping her hands on her trousers and clambering to her feet. It was a school day so the morning had been quiet, but the afternoon rush was about to start, and somebody had to sell goat feed!

-

“Give it back, it’s mine!” the child tried to pull their coat out of the goat's mouth, and Dreamspears wondered where it had all gone wrong. She named this particular goat ‘Brown’, and they weren't normally trouble, but today she had tried to bite a toddler, to chew off one of the other goat's tails and to run off with three different coats. She had actually taken a solid bite out of one child's bright red coat, and was now trying for score number two, red threads still hanging from the corners of her mouth.

Dreamspears pushed her thumbs into the goat's jaw and tried to pry the teeth apart, only slightly worried about the possibility of lost fingers in the process.

“It’s miine” the kid whined, tugging harder at their coat, and she resisted the urge to burst out laughing. She would make sure that all of the food anybody bought today went to Brown. The poor thing was obviously hungry.

There were four goats who were deemed to be “Not Child-Friendly”, and that night Brown was added to their pack, stuffed full of food and still chewing on a scrap of stolen fabric.