The Sentinels a voice from down the ages, so in haunting in its song

the druid liked to think he had been able to communicate with emaleth and deirdre during their quiet suspension within blue willow's body. the mind of an unborn child must be a most intriguing thing indeed, he believed -- who could know what they thought or if they dreamt, if they knew the tongue of their mother and if they knew many things, things forgotten upon reentry into the world. each soul was old, outliving its body until it was drawn down into the shell of another, or into the as-of-yet empty form of an embryonic child. taltos was not so foolish to share this notion with others, lest they believe him mad, but it was a belief he had held since his own childhood, if his beginning could be called that.

he watched the pale girl bob her head and cry out, and his heart was broken at the fear in her tiny voice. yet, there, there, her eyelids were finally parted, and she beheld the four walls of the den. taltos moved into her field of vision, obscuring it with his muzzle, that she might be calmed and then reopen her gaze when her heartbeat had slowed to its natural rhythm.