They settled in the valley, picking a spot beneath a tree where squirrels and birds were gathering.

Connall’s pack settled across the valley from them. Raisa, giving her mother a glance from the side, skulked over to him.

Nakai sighed, “I do not understand her,” he said with a huff, sitting near Bazil.

“She is young and he gives her compliments,” Bazil said. “Shall we go do some counter annoyance? Let’s go say hello to some of the girls.”

Nekana huffed, but she did not stop them. She trusted Bazil and so she let them go. Nakai gave her a large-eyed look over his shoulder as his brother half-pushed him along. Amalia sat near her, and there was silence between them for a while.

Amalia sighed. “Mother… recently, I find myself wondering about Nadia.”

Nekana breathed out slowly. “Yes? Why is that?”

Amalia was sitting but tap-danced a little, back and forth, with her front feet. “You know how the Gods’ words are sometimes fulfilled in unexpected ways? Do you think that there has been no replacement successor to the Moryshin because she might be out there somewhere?”

Nekana tilted her head. “Well, if that is the plan, the Gods have not told me.”

Amalia nodded. “This has left us in infamy, which I think is about to get much worse if Nadia is not found… or the new Moryshin is not appointed. He is not here.”

Nekana’s ears folded back a little as she realized what Amalia said was true. Most every clan, except some of the badgers and boars, were here, and almost every available member of each of those clans. Is he just slow because he is old?

There was a lot of tense chattering, and Nekana realized she was getting looked at by several people. My little one was supposed to be your successor, not me. It is not my fault… She felt her ears wilting.

The tension grew. The eagle that spent the most time with the Moryshin arrived, landing on a small sapling in the middle of the valley. He shifted back and forth on his perch as the tree bent a little beneath his weight. “I am… here to say the Moryshin will not be coming. He encourages you to meet and decide how you will handle the recent heavy news. However,” the bird continued, feathers getting puffy along his body as he got disconcerted by the palpable ire that spread through the air, “he says that mystics who leave the boundaries of our forest cannot be protected effectively. He says that the treaty cannot be broken with the town; any mystic who knowingly breaches the boundaries of it will bring hardship upon us all.”

“That is all?” a cougar snarled. “Why will he not come? Horrors happened to Belza and Setsy!”

“I am only his messenger,” the bird said defensively.

“The Moryshin is old,” said a big elk. He was snow white, and his antlers were many-pointed, with flowers and moss hanging from them. “He does not have the strength for us to start a war or try to peel back the treaty,” the elder said, towering over the cougar as he stepped forward. He was easily the biggest creature here, and possibly the one who had called the meeting.

There was an outburst of protests, but the elk just raised his voice, overpowering them. “Therefore! We must not act like children running to our grandfather expecting him to solve everything. We have our rules. Setsy and Belza are lost, what is our plan going forward? It is clear we cannot leave the humans to act how they want. I have seen the humans in the deep woods, and so have many of you. They sneak around and hunt our children. Let us hear the perspective of the elders that are here and make decisions on our own.”

There was a grudging silence.

“I would like to hear from Nekana. She has the most experience with the last dragon and has been favored by Gods and the Moryshin,” called a rabbit. His own gray whiskers gave him an almost human beard. He was like Nakai, with an affinity for the wind, and wings stood against his back, and he had four long rabbit ears.

Nekana could not remember his name. It made her feel awkward as she moved to the center of the valley. I am glad Rosalea was here. “I feel we have only two choices,” she said after clearing her throat.

So many eyes were on her. Her heart began to pound so loud, she raised her voice as if needed to compete against its fluttering beat. “The first choice would be to begin providing for the humans, to take the spirit out of them for fighting us.”

Exactly as she had anticipated, there were angry ripples of reaction to her suggestion.

She took a deep breath, more clearly, “Since we cannot attack, we can only siege. We can block their supplies. We can keep them out of the woods. We can make them fight us for every resource until it becomes untenable for them. That will either bring the dragon in where perhaps a group of us could try and destroy her, or it will make them give up the town because they cannot get the metals they profit from.”

There was a long period of silence. Then, from the trees, the birds called, “Siege!” and soon the cry was taken up by many of the clans.

Nekana felt that for the first time in a long time, people were looking at her with some respect. It felt unearned… but still nice.

The rest of the meeting turned to logistics.

***

Rosalea played some tug with Miri while the bread rose. The wolves did not really like too much bread at once, since it did not match their diet well, but they did seem to like it as a treat.

Miri sulked a good bit. “I am going to get magic soon, and then I will be involved with important things also.”

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Rosalea smiled, “I do not doubt it,” she agreed, offering Miri a little bit of dried carrot to chew on from one of her barrels.

Miri huffed. There was silence for a while as Rosalea began to put the shaped bread in its pan by the fire.

Rosalea propped open the skin as things felt a little smoky, she’d need to clean her chimney of whatever was blocking it in the morning.

“Hey, Rosalea? You said your liana was a wolf, right? That’s why you got comfortable with us?”

Rosalea was not sure if it was that or how welcome she felt. “Yes. Actually, we were coming here about information for the Uryan prophecy and about Gods.”

“Your liana was from here?” Miri asked with big eyes.

“She said she was, yes.”

Mere revealed she was more awake than Rosalea had anticipated. “What was her name?”

“Fen.” Rosalea managed. She braced, but she actually did not feel like crying.

“WHAT? Really! We have to tell everyone!” Miri danced out of the house and did some zooming around the clearing.

“Tell everyone what?” Amalia asked as she bounded over and scooped Rosalea up by the back of her shirt and carried her out of her house with all kinds of rough excitement. “I am not really a puppy, so you should put me down!” Rosalea complained, squirming a little, but stopping as she heard stitches popping.

Amalia grinned and set her down in the middle of everything. “I was able to take over your plan,” Nekana said, coming up to her. “To siege them out as best as we can.” She touched her nose to Rosalea’s forehead. “Thank you, for understanding what would happen, being there to protect us, and for knowing what to do as things get dark. You really are a blessing.”

Rosalea blushed, closing her eyes. “It was not really me; it was Ulric.”

The wolf smiled. “Something else we have in common, I see. Sadness and an inability to accept praise for what we feel we have not earned. In any case, starting tomorrow, things are going to be different. Even we will be patrolling to keep humans out of our forests.”

Rosalea worried that their best choice would have been to try and show kindness, but this was not her decision to make, so she decided to keep the anxiety to herself.

“Mother! Mother! Listen!” Miri hopped back and forth.

Rosalea almost felt an impulse to silence the little one, to stop her from telling. She knew in her gut there could only be one reason why Miri would recognize Fen’s name.

But, Nekana tilted her head and invited Miri to speak. “Fen! Fen was her liana!”

There was less than a second of stunned silence as Raisa roared to life. “YOU? She was literally wasted on YOU?” The look-alike wolf rushed her, only to get slammed into by Bazil, but her jaws closed inches from Rosalea’s face.

Rosalea stumbled back, Amalia stood over her with hackles up.

Nakai and Bazil wrestled Raisa down. “Stop!”

Raisa switched to God’s language, “No! She is a filthy Uryan! She allowed her liana to die, and we are sheltering her. She deserves to die; it is just natural for them. She’s half a soul. A human. A dragon spy.”

Rosalea could not contain herself, “I did not allow Fen to die!” she screamed back at the wolf, stalking her way out beneath Amalia, only to get the back of her shirt grabbed. “I did not allow her to die!” Rosalea screamed again, louder. “I hate you even looking like her! How dare you! Come and kill me then, if you dare. You are nothing like Fen!”

She twisted free of Amalia’s grasp, and Raisa flailed free of Nakai and Bazil. Rosalea ducked beneath Bazil and came right up to Raisa. “Go ahead. Go ahead!”

Raisa’s ears flattened. Rosalea seethed. “You cause your family too much trouble. Connall fraternizes with the dragon that sends the humans into the forests that killed Fen. Humans that almost killed Miri. Humans that are capturing mystics for it. You back talk; you are too cowardly to tell me to my face how it is that you feel. But I understand. I have been able to understand every word since I got here. If I was a dragon spy, I would have been a better one than you could have expected.” Rosalea reached out to slap the wolf, but she stopped herself.

Raisa was all hackles. Rosalea was on the balls of her feet. I have never been mad like this before have I? She hesitated, a vague memory trying to overcome the mind magic on her and surface again.

Raisa tried looming over her. Rosalea stood her ground, rising up higher on the balls of her feet, putting her arms out on either side of her body. Go ahead, go ahead, I dare you.

Raisa lunged, and Rosalea turned on her heel, pivoting out of the reach of the biting teeth, and then followed her instincts. She grabbed onto the back of Raisa’s neck with one hand and her ear with the other, and kept her turn going, pulling the lunging wolf off balance. Rosalea did not expect to pull her right off her feet, but Raisa tripped and landed on her side. Rosalea rushed to drop down on her neck, sitting with one knee beneath Raisa’s jaw and the other at the knob of her skull at the back of her head. She was just out of reach of Raisa’s flailing paws.

“You are not really trying,” Rosalea challenged her, surprised no one had moved to pull either of them apart. “You have magic. Where is it? This does not have to be a fair fight, you could just win it.”

Raisa growled, “Get off.”

“Make me,” Rosalea growled back.

Raisa went limp. “You cannot make me do anything. I know what you are doing.”

Rosalea glowered. “You are right. I did not deserve to live through losing her. I feel awkward and guilty about it every day. And angry. The Gods nearly killed my friends in front of me; I attacked Kaylar because of them. They were angry that I was not doing prophecy things. But I did not know I was the One or what I should be doing, so my little girl grows up without me, and I follow the one lead I get from a temple, and my cousin dies and Fen dies and now I am stuck here doing what? Getting accused by you of doing it all on purpose? Just shut up, please, for the love of Gods.”

Rosalea’s hand hovered near the wolf’s ear as if she would like to grab and tweak it, but the other one was already looking hurt from her grabbing it just a moment ago, so she restrained herself. She got up, waiting to see if Raisa would do anything, but she didn’t.

All of the wolves were staring at her. Rosalea found herself coming up on her the balls of her feet again.

“Easy,” Bazil said with his usual good-natured demeanor. “I have just never seen anyone manage something like that so smoothly. We are all a little impressed. You are so little and so savage.”

Nekana made a sad smile, but her expression was oddly accepting. “We did not expect to see Fen again when she left or to ever know what fully happened to her. This is sad information, but I know it is not your fault. I am sad that we did not know and were not there to see her again.”

Raisa got up. Rosalea did not face her or acknowledge her openly, but she got very tense. She did not know what the wolf would do.

“We know it was not your fault,” Amalia said. “Even Raisa knows, it was just painful. They were very close.”

“That’s right, Raisa. The Gods do as they choose to do,” Mere grumbled.

Then, grudgingly from Raisa, “Rosalea, show me how you did that to me.”

Amalia wagged her tail, looking relieved. “Yes! We all want to see it again.”

Raisa huffed, and as Rosalea turned to look back at her, she looked really just… rumpled. Flustered by her sister and Rosalea besting her. But it is the same way Fen looked when she was annoyed. Her throat tightened. Because they were sisters.

“You are okay,” Bazil said, perhaps reading her face the most accurately of all of them.

Rosalea nodded. Then, as things were silent, she took a deep breath, “So, the way that you move when you started to rush me was easy for me to read.” She wanted to move forward… from the pain she had been caused, from the pain she had caused them… she wanted to move forward once more until she could find herself back in the place she had started from.