Moonspear procedures

The girl, with her leer and sweet voice, was clearly not Hydra. Olive could not help but feel the area between her shoulder blades unpinch and her demeanor relaxed somewhat. The dark girl — one of three, so it seemed — made Olive uncomfortable, though the druid was loathe to admit it. Perhaps it had been the way Hydra had been present at not one but two of her son’s chastenings that gave her unease, as such negative experiences were prone to do… But Olive felt there was a dangerous miasma that surrounded the hellhound and found she could not relax in her presence.

But this was not Hydra — It was Lyra, a sister she had yet to meet, and she seemed nice. ”Oh,” Olive echoed, and for a moment her eyes soft, but then suddenly her pupils constricted, her heart lurched and the mother’s mossy gaze steeled somewhat intensely into Lyra’s own. What had Aries done now? Did this entire family harbor a hatred for her only remanent boy? What awful tidings did she bring? 

"I am," she spoke — and for that moment, Olive was certain that the words uttered from Lyra’s mouth would be the harbinger of some sort of doom. There were so few good things that happened anymore [her children being 100% of those], and yet, so many sad things too. It was wildly out of proportion! Whatever Lyra had to say would surely result in her family’s uprooting from yet another pack — because that’s what the druid had been conditioned to believe. Perhaps the gods were not yet done with her; she had not gotten far enough away from the dark night to appease them rightly. They were not yet satisfied with her sacrifice.

Despite the storm that brewed within, Olive kept her exterior cool. ”I would not turn away a friend,” came her delicate voice, speaking kindly — her nervousness palpable only in the whispering and wavering of her voice. Internally, she braced herself.