CYRANThe air is thick with magic. It's everywhere, the rexume plants stretch out like some lake of vegetation as far as a hundred yards. The aquamarine leaves seem to glow with the sun, and the peas are bursting from their pods. I've seen a plantation of kingpeas; we were made to work the King's Glade, watering and harvesting them; but not this wide and unprotected. Saelyna's breath is on hold, and her skin is pale. At first, I assume she's awed by the plants as I am. But then, she turns around and throws up a stream of black sludge. Alarmed, I turn to Veesa, but she's nodding with a smile. 'She must have felt their magic', she says and Argell nods. 'What the fuck are you talking about?' I ask with consternation as I hurry to her side. 'Do something!' I call to Veesa. 'No need to be alarmed, boy. Her body is purging the last of the rexanten, reacting to the pure magic of iden', she says calmly. Saelyna touches my arm lightly. 'I'm alright', she says, 'I'm fine. It's all gone. I thi

SAELYNAI've not seen her before but she grins at me, revealing large wolven fangs and I recall what Veesa said about some of them retaining their lupine features due to trauma. I wonder what happened to her. 'Uh…hello, Keilen. I'm Saelyna'. She bends her head again. 'Love your ears', she says, pointing, 'They're so…pointy'. There's a childishness to her act, but I'm not fooled. She has to be older than eighteen, give or take. 'And I like your…hair. Your eyes as well'. 'Oh'. She blinks and the red is replaced with a dark brown. 'I like keeping them on red so I can see ultra vision. It's supposed to be an ability only alphas can possess. But what do I know?' I feel my eyes widen. 'You're an alpha?' I whisper. She throws her head back and utters a soft laugh that makes me warm up to her. 'Alpha, she says. No, Saelyna, an alpha is not chosen by trivialities like eye colour. It's by achievements. Or so I hear'. Something about her tone makes me ask what she means. She leans in, like she'

CYRANI watch them splash about without interest. I never learnt to swim, and I'm definitely not learning with these wolvens. Sitting here, on the edge of this rock suddenly feels precarious, and I stand up to go when I see it. A brown wolf slinking forward quietly. I blink severally, it must be the same hallucination I had two days before. But it's real; all my senses have picked up the all too familiar traces of danger. Instinctively, I reach for my arrow. It's not at hand. I take out my hunting knife, but it takes me a while to realize it's not even looking at me. Then I remember the others. I yell for them to get out of the water, waving my arms wildly and jumping frantically. Gylen hears me but when he turns, the creature has slouched off. He swims closer. 'What did you say?' he asks. 'There was a wolf's, I say, 'Brown and..and the largest animal I've seen..' Seirmon and Edril come by as well, their eyes scou

SAELYNA I have never actually considered learning to knit or crochet or anything that requires me sitting still. Veesa has her way of convincing a person, though, and I have absolutely no idea how I've been able to sit here for the past thirty minutes or so, knitting a scarf. I'm not actually knitting anyway. Just fumbling with the wool and getting it all wrong. We're all seated in a circle as Veesa talks about the old days, when she was still a young woman like us, back when Halden was a large forest town known as Halden Woods. The other girls listen to her while they work, some even staring up while their hands move automatically, like machines. 'I fell in love with and married Tion. It was a time when wolvens were at peace, when Quindar was filled a land of different folk that coexisted peacefully. He was a wolven lord, of the king's court, and he owned this very land in fact'. The girls murmur in awe. I wonder how old she must be. A hundred years, give or take. 'We had a beautif

CYRANI'm sitting on the edge of the outcrop again, but this time, I watch the sun set in the west, sliding slowly out of view behind the distant hills. It's a beautiful thing, and I wonder how I've missed much of it my whole life. Our cottage was below the hill next to the forest, so the sunset wasn't really something we saw daily. I saw it once, though, but the sky had been the darkest that day, and the village was of smoke and ashes. I hear approaching feet and I don't need to turn to know it's Gylen; he walks like he has all the time in the world, with a leisure gait that I admire. He sits beside me, his left hand in a cast and his left eye looking as queer as ever on his long face. 'I want to be alone', I tell him. 'What a coincidence. So let's be alone together'. We're silent for a while. 'You look…positively useless', he says suddenly. 'Thanks', I snap, 'I feel better already'. 'It wasn't a compliment', he says mildly, t