Herbalists' Cache The demon sat there waiting on her porch

She didn't remember calling out. It had just happened, and yet as the noise settled between the trees, the moment slipped away from her — out of her control, and gone. Then there was a response. It was stronger, deeper, and puncuated with such a ferocity that Tavi cocked her head at it; she looked between the trees at the shifting light, watched the dust, watched and watched, as if she could see the sound itself and trace it with her eyes; and then there was a shape slipping towards her. It happened so fast, all of it. She couldn't react — but then again, she couldn't do much of anything. Her haunches trembled, and she took an erratic step, colliding one sharp shoulder with the coarse trunk of a tree. It didn't hurt.

The woman looked down, sort of. She wasn't paying that much attention now, and the stranger who had arrived — Stark! Screamed some tiny piece of her brain, to no avail — was forgotten. He spoke, and she lifted her eyes but seemed to see past him, see to many faces within his — Ukko, Reek, dark dark dark so much dark — and again her mouth opened, only to let her jaw hinge and hang uselessly. Her tongue lifted and touched at her top teeth, and a brief flicker of sunlight illuminated the dark mud that remained there. She looked more like an undead thing than a wolf; whatever parts of her remained were hanging loosely, or missing patches, or pit-like and empty. Clearly Stark had encountered her within the final hours of her life — as nobody could possibly survive like this for long.