“I am going after Mother,” Amalia announced, her hackles all standing up as she bounded away.

“Wait for me!” Bazil called as he went after her.

It is a little funny that one is black and the other is white from the same litter, she thought as she watched them disappear. Then, a sobering thought, I guess Fen was their age? Since she was an older sister Raisa looked up to? Speaking of Raisa, Rosalea had only Mere and Nakai here if something else happened.

“Rosalea, tell us what happened.”

Miri whimpered. Rosalea felt uncertain sharing something that was so scary in front of the pup. So, she tried to choose neutral words but still convey the situation. “Um, it reminded me a little of a disease regular animals can get, but I am not sure about Mystics. They walk with a sort of uneven gate and become very animated and aggressive.” She paused, and then Raisa and Nakai nodded, following what she was referencing. Mere scooped in Miri with a paw, but so far the pup looked like she was all right. “Um,” Rosalea struggled, “there was an additional element of… corruption of magic. It looked like fire on the cougar, even to me.”

“Looked like, or was, fire?” Raisa asked.

“Nothing around it caught, except I did see the cwhenougars who had to… stop… it rolling in snow to get what spread to them off. There was also heat on the ground, the snow was hissing with it, when it passed.”

She saw every wolf’s ears folding down and they all stared at her with big eyes.

“I am going to talk to Connall.”

“No, Raisa, not him again.” It was the whiniest she had ever heard somewhat shy Nakai be.

Raisa huffed, “He really should know! We may forget, but they are our people too. I know he’s not always… nice… but still.”

“Not always nice is an understatement,” Nakai growled. “Traitor is more like. He’s going to get you or another one of us hurt.”

Mere groaned. “I do not wish to side with Raisa on most of her stance about that mongrel… but, in this case, I fear she is right. This is not something that should be hidden.”

Raisa sighed, “A wolf can change you know, over time. Even him.”

Nakai’s ears folded flat. “Maybe, but probably not him.”

There was a tense silence. “Mere, Miri, and I should be all right, if both of you want to go,” Rosalea suggested to see if it would soothe Nakai at all.

He shook his head no. “Raisa, will you be careful?”

“I will stay away from humans on my way over,” Raisa announced loftily.

Rosalea breathed out slowly. “Is everything going to be okaby?” Miri asked. Both she and Nakai walked over to Mere. Rosalea sat down near the old wolf, not leaning on her, but near her, and Miri crawled into her lap. Nakai laid down on the other side of her and Miri, making two walls of fluffy wolves on either side of her and the puppy.

When there was no immediate answer, Miri would become more anxious. “Why are the humans like this? You are not like this.”

Rosalea tried to think of a diplomatic way to answer it, but she gave up. “Wars are a little complicated. When people are fighting in a war, it becomes a battle of principles and people become part of a collective. I think… any individual human there is probably not all that bad; they might even be nice. But, to them, the mystics are bullies. They keep all the good land for themselves and all the good food.”

“But momma says that they dump molten earth on the ground and pollute the river with ash and the air with smoke. She says they broke their promises and tear up the earth and kill the trees we grow and are the forest heart’s eyes.”

“Yes, they do. It is how they believe the land will support them. Metals make all kinds of amazing human things, art, buildings, tools…”

“Weapons,” said Nakai with a little bit of a sideways glance.

Rosalea nodded. “And the mystics grow amazing trees and beautiful flowers and pretty fountains and capture lights…” she decided to shift praise to them too, trying not to take one side too strongly.

Miri, surprisingly, understood. “But we made the humans hungry.”

“Yes. Hungry, poor, and sick. And with the dragon in the mix, they probably cannot leave Miron. But there’s been so much hurt already that it may be too late for mystics to forgive the humans for the killed trees and murdered friends and working with dragons. And the humans cannot forgive either. They will not see you as you, just as their enemy.”

Miri folded her ears flat. “If you were in the town, would you see things the same as the rest of the humans? Would we be enemies?”

Rosalea shook her head. “I would not. A long time ago, when I was first trapped in Kaylar’s dragon town, his people were also cruel.” Annie. She also thought of the stallion with Madness and sighed. “I thought of Kaylar as my enemy. I know I would have been the same here. I feel like it is easy to understand when people are miserable with no go way forward. People who are desperate, or mystics… pain makes pain, sometimes.” Maybe it was the way I was raised, looking at the person in power as if they were to blame. Maybe it was why it was so easy for me to forgive Yelena when she looked at me for her pain.

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Miri wedged her face into Rosalea’s armpit and huffed. Rosalea wrapped both her arms around the wolf. “I’m glad.”

Rosalea was not sure she was glad. The whole thing was sad.

“Pain making pain is not an excuse though,” Mere said. “People make choices to oversimplify things or inflict more of it.”

Miri moved her head, laying it against Rosalea’s chest so she could look at Mere. “What do you mean? Raisa wasn’t mean to Rosalea on purpose, was she? For… Fen?” she said the name very softly.

Mere was silent, then, she spoke deliberately, “She resented the God’s plan for Fen from the beginning, as soon as it was known. It is true that Fen did not get a calling for it until much later in life than normal, but it does not change that Fen wanted it.” Mere looked at Rosalea steadily, “That Fen wanted you. She wanted to serve and make an impact on the world. She told us again and again that you were important, and she was excited to do it.”

Rosalea felt her eyes burn and her face crinkle as the pain gripped onto her all new. Miri began licking under her chin and soothed the feeling away.

“Raisa was ready to resent Rosalea before she even knew anything about her. Biased because Rosalea was human, biased because she disagreed with Fen’s calling and choice to accept it, and biased because she found out how that service ended. But it was Raisa’s choice to blind herself like that, and it was her choice to get properly bested by a little silver-haired girl.”

Both Nakai and Miri chuckled. “I still can’t figure out how you did that so easily,” Nakai said with a grin, apparently a little excited to see his headstrong sister get a correction.

“Kaylar used to make me spar with him to practice my magic. Fen and I rough-housed a lot. I just… I knew what she was going to try to do, and so I acted on instinct.”

“Is Raisa going to be okay?” Miri asked.

Mere groaned. “Probably. I know from personal experience those the difficult ones seem like they live the longest.” She grinned.

Nakai huffed, “You, Aunty Mere? Be difficult? No one would guess. Never.”

“Do not sass me,” the grizzled wolf groused.

Nakai grinned and put out his wing, pulling Rosalea over to his side with it, losing a feather against her hair, but not seeming to mind. He cuddled her like she was cuddling Miri, and it made her feel a little good. And lucky. I empathize with Raisa. I would resent Gods… and I resent myself… for Fen.

***

A winter storm heralded bad news in the Juniper Wind camp. A handful of Uryans made their way to them, in liana shape, and in bad condition. An older woman who had gotten her grandchildren to safety died despite all the best efforts of the healers.

A teenage boy was recovering quite well, and Taishan and Taigan both sat with him, sharing some of their stew. His whole family was gone now, he had been the only one to survive.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Ieshans,” the boy said. “Led by a man with blue eyes and blond hair.” He was silent, gripping his spoon so tightly it looked like the handle might crack. He breathed out raggedly, and then back in slowly. “They… have a new way of attacking. They ride in so hard and fast, that even when the liana sense them, it’s too hard to react. They set fire… to everything. Uh… the blond captain, he can light the arrows… I saw him. And they rain down from a dozen men like hell fire…” His voice became ragged.

“Take a break, eat your stew,” Taishan encouraged. “You do not have to rush; we have plenty of time.”

“Then, they leave, they ride out, things burned, we struggled to get the tents put out, and then they circled back, this time with swords and spears… just… swathing through everything. It was about… just killing us all and destroying everything.”

Taigan stared at his hands. Is it because of her? He thought of Rosalea.

Taishan patted the boy’s leg, and in fact, talk about the prophecy, and how close it could be to coming to an end. They all just had to believe in the best.

Taigan bowed politely and leave his father with the poor kid. “Taj, what’s with the change in Ieshan tactic? Do you know?”

“The clan Neesa have been talking to the liana from the broken tribe.”

“And do they not know, or they do and you do not want to share?” Taigan questioned as the liana hesitated.

“It is hard to say. It is definitely true that they have changed from a defensive tactic to an aggressive one. It is also true to say that they have changed from taking prisoners to looking to clear out whole tribes. It is not clear why to the liana, and the Gods have not weighed in on the matter, so I do not have anything I can actually say upon the issue.”

The tenseness of the liana’s answer made Taigan anxious. He held out his arm, the hawk fluttered down from the tree to him and gripped onto his arm. Then he worked his way up to Taigan’s shoulder. Taigan closed his eyes and leaned against the soft feathery belly.

However, Taj did not have a lot of reassurance to offer. We are in Dyran. Winds blowing for the east carry darkness. As soon as the spring comes, we must move, perhaps over the Jagard mountains.

Taigan’s eyes grew huge. There is literally just rumors about people safely crossing those.

The large bird hissed a little and did not comment further about that. Taigan looked east and wondered what was out there that was so scary to his liana.

***

Beryn frowned at the group of five or six gathered around her. They had thrust a worn, stained handkerchief at her. It was clean, but it was so stained she still did not want to touch it because it seemed so dirty.

She unfolded it as they urged her to, not at all sure what she was about to see. A wilted flower head of Mathwyn… uh, actually a nice find, we could use some of that. Some… Areeyo weed leaves? And… what’s this green one? They were all looking at her so expectantly. The picked up the green leaf. She fed it a little magic. It unfurled and took on a dark green color and had red veins. “Oh, Liar Leaf.” She had never seen any in person, but she had read about them. Supposedly, it could be ground into different plant-based oils to create deceptive hair colors or even change the look of skin.

They were still staring at her, “So, you brought me a magical accelerant, a poison, and … a mutagen?” she was not sure what to call Liar’s Leaf, actually.

The men now looked at the kid who had done the best fighting off and luring the badger… Rozner, was it? “We were getting some trees chopped while there was a quiet moment, and it turned out to be an ambush. They let us work on it a while, and I got, uh, sorry, I got bored. I was poking at some herbs. These ones, pretty sure.”

“Turned back a pack of ‘em,” an older man interrupted. “The one he hit? Caught fire.”

Lady Beryn frowned. “I guess I should not have been ripping all the Areeyo weed out that I have seen growing everywhere.”

An old lady who was nosy that had been very good at making herself a nuisance cackled, “I told ye so! I told ye the ancestors planted it!”

Lady Beryn made a musing noise. “All right, well, let’s go harvesting some plants then. You did really good, kid.”