The Sentinels where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night

Lotte chuckled warmly at the mirth that colored the healer’s alluring timbre. “Yours,” she repeated, waiting for the inevitable ruffling of her feathers at the insinuation that she belonged to anyone other than herself [and maybe Dagfinn]. It came, but it was muted, and it melted beneath the idea of passing off her self-imposed responsibility for just a little while. “Very well, liekkikukka — I am yours. Do with me what you will.” She suited action to speech, flopping as dramatically as she dared to the earth.

It was from this vantage point, peering up at the viridian-eyed dryad, that Lotte saw in intimate detail the delicate quivering of the pale throat as Hemlock’s breath trembled with feeling. “There was a tradition in Donnelaith,” murmured the young mother-to-be. “Samhain — ‘a time to honor our dead and usher in a blessed new year.’” She quoted the night watcher carefully. Lotte had never been close with many of the wolves of the wood, but she respected their traditions and their memories all the same. “I believe for the Mayfairs it was linked to a certain day of the year.” Her voice took on a higher pitch as she mimicked the voice of the witch queen, searching for a lighter, more melodic soprano than her own alto: “Deirdre Mayfair, the witch queen, rose before the grave of her father and said, ‘Lasher Mayfair, our father…he founded this place, and wished for it to know only peace. He was a good man, a kind man, who loved many, and who was loved in turn.’” Lotte mused to herself, “Emaleth Mayfair, the night watcher, Deirdre’s sister, wished for those present to speak of wolves who had been lost — but none spoke. Until the fire — well, life has been kind to me and to my ilk. Now I add the names of Deirdre, Starbuck, Furiosa, Emaleth, and Doe to those lost.” She paused, thinking of Coelacanth.

“I am not a kind wolf,” came the unwelcome realization.

Shaking her head, she recalled Hemlock’s original question. “Walk with me,” she suggested gently. “I will make you see what was instead of what is.” She rolled over and got to her paws.