"Yaga," Hasan said from the shadows of the trees, his voice low and gentle. Condensation billowed from his mouth and nostrils like a dragon's smoke.

He had crept upon her while she stood in the clearing: accidentally at first, then on purpose. Habit had stilled his gait as soon as he'd smelled her, and he had nearly turned to take his twilight stroll elsewhere. But something had given him pause. He'd thought of the day they'd met, of the blood and salt and spite on his tongue, and of Baba Yaga's eternal patience: how she'd let him remain here in silence and solemnity for season after season, despite the fact he was good for no one and nothing and had never so much as offered her anything beyond perfunctory small talk. Something had reached in through his armor and touched his heart, then, and once sounds of Yaga's approach reached him, Hasan had made his decision. He would end his self-imposed exile now.

Yet once her name left his lips, he gaped, nothing but air following it. He had not planned what he would say. What could he say now, when time had established their relationship as something distant and surface-level, something that existed only because of proximity? In the quiet and gloom of dawn, it suddenly seemed possible for it to be more, but what exactly, he did not know.

He blinked his sightless amber eyes and pressed his lips together. Then, finally, with a voice like chipped stones, that once-spoken began tumbling uncontrolled: "I never told you, you know — how happy it made me to see the Forest still under female leadership. My mother ruled here once, with another mare. In their generation it was a new thing, for a mare — let alone two — to take what was once a stallion's job. There was even a war over it, brought right to the Forest's shores. I'm told it was a bloody one."