The Sentinels the breeze it wrapped around me, as I stood there on the shore

lasher felt a stirring of the spirits roundabout the whelping den, and he knew that deirdre had found within herself the gift of rampant thought; even now, he could all but see the cogs of her tiny mind turning, working to make sense of all that she saw 'round her. it reminded him instantly of how he had discovered the snap of synapse, the machinations of reasoning, the moment that suzanne had called him forth from the lash of wind, the breath of rushing rain, from the mountains, from the molten lava that roiled beneath the surface of the very earth -- he, created from her witch's memories of the only men she had ever seen, dark-haired, blue-eyed. a simple sylph, the salt of the very loam, and it had been with her child's mind that she had been able to see the shape of him in the gloom, and call him forth into existence.

that moment now deirdre experienced, on a smaller scale -- witch though she was, the child was flesh and blood, born of a mortal mother. she would never know the struggle of a spirit to adapt to a living body, to fit his limbs and hips and joints into the unyielding sinews and corpuscles of a mortal form. deirdre and emaleth would adapt themselves in a reverse manner; their bodies would meld to the spirit of the witch within. haunting beauty would be their lot, he knew.

it had been siku's savage loveliness that had drawn the man to tartok, for the soul of the witch was one with the heavy bearlike body of the mountain dweller. but she had abandoned him, and despite the explanations of tonravik, lasher still carried the hurt buried deep in his breast. but that was the past; his eyes were fixed upon the future now, embodied in the small pale body of his white witch. she had come into the age of knowing, which taltos understood now to be the moment after one's eyes opened in the body chosen by the soul for its next vessel.

these spirits had chosen the empty bodies of the children for their thrones, and so had brought life and vitality within the woman to the babes. but here, here was the connection between the awareness of an unborn infant and the awestruck realizations of the opening eyes, the comprehension of the primal mind meeting the emotion, and it was a truly wondrous thing to behold.

perhaps she had once knew all these things; perhaps she had known them the moment the wandering spirit melded with her embryonic flesh, but lasher would never comprehend such. it was only that which he sensed, which he himself had experienced, that led him to the assumption that deirdre also knew such things. emaleth's awakening would come soon, and they would be matched, more than a force upon the world.

presently, his tiny girl turned to him, and lasher roused himself to pad to her side, to glance upon the snow and kiss the top of her downy head. he was silent, however; deirdre did not question, for in the infant blue of her eyes had been born a new awareness, and she only requested his company in this moment, which the druid was happy to give.