The ghoul still ached in every inch of her body. She hurt in areas that she did not know were possible, and she cowered in the darkness of her new pack with a fearful eye on those who surrounded her. Lucy did not trust them; she did not trust anyone. Despite her promise that was made to Charon, the shadow was taking her time in getting well. She had opted to scope out her new home in order to find the best hiding places. She had been fortunate enough to find a small series of caves in the mountain that allowed for her to hide without the companionship of other wolves. In the night, she would hunt to deposit small voles and rabbits into their caches and then sleep through most of the day. It was working well enough for her.
 
During that portion of the day, she had taken to creeping around in the shadowed areas of the pack. Lucy had not come across many of the others, until she managed to stumble upon a dark-furred young man with tropical green eyes and a coat that reminded her distinctly of her attacker. With soft, bristling fur, the ghoul watched him. Her pale blue gaze was trained to his face, but she could see no malice there. After a few moments, she stepped through the brush and nodded to him. Still a fearful distance away, her limbs were rigid and her eyes were wide.

The boy turned to her with bright eyes and a soft chuff in greeting. He appeared friendly, and while he spoke for a moment or two, Lucy roamed his figure with an interested gaze. The young man was coated in a peppering of ink and deep grey. His peculiar eyes stood out against the dark backdrop like nothing else she’d seen before. Once he had finished talking, she drew her ears forward and swallowed the lump that had gathered at the back of her throat. With a careful step or two, she closed some of the distance between them and then offered the smallest of smiles at his inquiry.
 
“That’s a deep question to start with,” the ghoul answered him with a small wiggling of her stubbed and tufted tail. Had she wanted to be forthcoming with her encounters with the wild folk on the outside, she would have certainly frightened the boy away. Instead, she opted for dry humor. While her limbs still ached and her rear end did not feel healed well enough to venture far from the pack, she had still survived.
 
“I’m Lucy.”

The shadow would have imagined that the dark boy was young based only on how he spoke. She smiled softly at the response he offered, wanting him to know that while she wasn’t eager to answer his inquiry, she did not mind that it was presented to her. The sharp green of his gaze caught her eye more than once as she listened to his introduction. Jarilo she repeated in the silence of her mind. The boy then went on to say that he had imagined Lucy to be one of his sisters. Her brows rose in a moment of surprise, and she glanced over her shoulder as though the dark creatures would be standing behind her upon mention. Feeling a bit foolish, she faced him again and her stubbed tail wagged politely.
 
“Your sisters? How many do you have?” she asked him in a tentative voice. Then, assuming that he had mistaken her for her inky coat and sharp blue gaze, she canted her head a bit to the left and swiveled a single ear so that it splayed sideways. Lucy wondered if she would happen upon a doppelgänger in her time on Moonspear. For a moment, a flash of fear raced through her at the thought of another surprise meeting with siblings she knew nothing about. Casting the thought aside and knowing it was foolish, Lucy focused on Jarilo and learning more about him.  

The boy offered the names of a small slew of strangers. Lucy did her best to hold tight to their callings, but she only managed to save a few that had stood out against the roaring of her own mind. He was open about his family and he seemed more than willing to answer the questions that she asked of him. It was relieving to find companionship with someone of the sort.
 
“I’d imagine I will run into a few of them. It sounds like you’ve got a big family,” she commented with a small smile. There was a bitterness to the expression on her face. Though she tried to fend off the negative feelings, the ghoul could not help but to envy him for the closeness that he seemed to share with his relatives. It was a stretch – she knew – to say that Jarilo was close to those he had named. When compared to the fact that Lucy could not have named more than one member of her immediate family, it was a startling contrast. “You’ve been here all your life, then?” she ventured, wondering if he had wandered in one night and found a home, or if he had been raised on the grounds of the mountainside with all of the others he had listed.