With each passing day, Esther had grown more wild. Alongside her, the world around her had grown more enticing for a girl who had been all but raised in total separation from wolf kind. For the most part, she had been designated as a watcher of their kind. For reasons they had attempted to explain, Natiya and Elohim had kept quiet and kept to themselves, but even the most diligent parents could only keep their children bound for so long. Esther had grown too wild to contain, and she'd grown too bold to let them try.

Life, the world outside their little sphere, had started to feel more and more like the dark waters they had been raised alongside. The water would be smooth like a mirror on its surface, yet Esther had seen just how quickly it could become a raging torrent, or just how much violence was hidden beneath its surface. In early spring, she had seen the body of a young fawn bobbing up and down in the river. It would disappear for a moment, only to reappear several yards away, rising to the water's surface before being swallowed up again. Over and over, into and out of sight. Life, she thought, seemed like that. Her parents had tried to keep their focus on the smooth, calm surface of the water, but Esther wanted to know what had been hidden beneath. What lay out there in the dark water of the world?

She sniffed along the water's edge, paws adept and well versed in the lay of the land. Ears swiveled, eyes moved slow and steady across the water and the rocks. Esther had been raised there, and she knew to watch for ripples, to listen for thunder on a clear day, how to clamber up the stones when the water rose up. She moved through the dappled shadows of the crags, caught between wanting to be seen and wanting to be hidden. The sky was a blank slate of unmoving grey, and she could smell rain somewhere on the horizon. It made her hackles twitch, but perhaps it had been the scent of another that had made her skin prickle with caution and excitement.

Silently, she leapt up onto an overhanging ledge. With a distinct feeling of being followed, she continued on the narrow path with little more than a glance down at the swirling mass of water that moved below. Esther saw no danger, but she wondered if whoever had been curious about her might hold back if she kept it up. In any case, her destination was a tangled mass of old, rotten trees and waterlogged debris that had piled up further up the crags. There, she was in her element, but she doubted her pursuer would be.