Kaiya was abruptly woken by a harsh, tortured scream. The tone of it paralyzed her, and for its duration she lay still on the muddy river bank where she had fallen. It was unmistakably another wolf’s voice, but the shrillness of the cry, its notes of torment gave it an unworldly quality which filled her with terror. She lay as dead next to the river’s raging water until the savage song ended before daring to crack open her eyes to peek at the singer. It was the brute she had seen before, collapsed near the tree line. He stood now at the river’s edge, staring wildly downstream. She was intimidated by his size, distrusted the way his coat bristled on end, and most of all was shocked at the terrible sounds which had apparently come from his maw. She had in her an inherent wariness of all male wolves, but this one filled her with true fear. She silently thanked whatever power that might be that he was downstream, looking away from her, and was apparently wholly absorbed in that task.

With painful caution she gathered her splayed limbs under her and turned away from the river, all the while keeping a wary eye on the apparently wild brute. She began the task of creeping over the muddy ground toward the relative safety of the trees, keeping her slight frame pressed as low as possible, taking every step with deliberate delicacy. Should he turn she knew that she could bolt, that her fleetness of foot would likely allow her to lose him in the denser parts of the forest, but this was a chance she would rather not take.

As chance would have it, the other wolf took no notice of her, and after what seemed an eternity of painstaking crawling she gained the cover of the forest. Here she came stiffly out of her crouch and cast a watchful glance back toward the river. The grey brute was gone. Her heart slammed once or twice in fear within her chest, but the stillness of the wood around her was unbroken and she could catch no scent of malic on the cool breeze. Still, better to put some distance between herself and this place. She turned and broke out into her customary silent wolf’s run.

But all was not silent as her slender white frame cut through the trees. A faint rustling came from somewhere fatally close behind her and she whirled, snarl catching in her throat, to face the assailant. Nothing but silent trees looked back at her, and her probing amber gaze could discern no movement among them. She loosed the snarl anyway, a warning to anyone who might lie hidden. Blossom was a strange place, and she knew not yet the full cast of strange beasts that called these lands home.

As soon as she was once more on her way, the rustling sound recommenced, just as close as it had been the first time. It seemed that whoever made the sound was directly upon her. She did not stop this time, for ahead she saw a break in the trees, a small clearing into which she could draw her pursuer. Ears pinned flat to her skull, she broke into a full-out sprint. Kaiya was small, slight, and thus terribly fast. All this she knew at heart, and so she put her all into gaining the clearing certain that she could put at least some distance between herself and the rustling follower. But the rustle kept at her heels even at her most breakneck pace. She burst into the clearing in a frenzy of fear and leapt in a circle, snapping and snarling to face down whatever chased her.

Once again, there was nothing but inoffensive woodland behind her. Confused and afraid, she continued turning in erratic circles, certain that some foe hid just beyond her field of vision. Finally, from the corner of one eye she caught a flash of blue and stopped her spasmodic jumping. Blue? She knew of no blue beast save for the small birds that sometimes flitted through the northern forests. That was when realization and memory both descended upon her. She had gone to Glaesfaet to seek the magic, to beg of it some gift, for she had seen the many gifted wolves of Blossom and craved some of that mystical power for herself.

Scarcely daring to hope, she craned her neck to glimpse her own back. What greeted her there was at first entirely beyond her comprehension. Where that very morning her ivory coat had flowed unbroken there now sat a ruff of brilliant blue and white feathers – the very same as those she had glimpsed upon those flitting birds. The magic had worked! It had chosen her, graced her with the touch of its power, blessed her with this impossible gift. It was those feathers that had created the faint rustling sound as she ran, not some shadowy hunter. She could feel in the skin beneath them a strange tingling; she guessed this to be the mark of the magic she now hosted.

Joy rose in her unchecked, and she began to leap and yip about the small clearing with reckless abandon. She reveled in her luck that her wish had been fulfilled. Now, with this magic residing upon her, perhaps she could finally begin to let go of some of her fear. But as she danced, the gloomy sky above released the first of winter’s soft snowflakes. As if in answer, the feathers of her brilliant plumage began to fall one by one to the frosted forest floor.

The first two or three fell without her notice, but as more fell and began to coat the ground she grew frantic. She scooped them into her mouth and tried vainly to place them back upon her back, but the motion more often than not only caused more of the feathers to fall out. She cried out in dismay. Why would the magic touch her only to leave her immediately? Was this a joke? Had she been tricked by some malignant force into a false sense of hope?

She whimpered forlornly as the last of her new, beautiful feathers fluttered lifelessly to the ground.

| . | . | Khett | . | . |