Blackfeather Woods and yet i am, and live—like vapours tossed

Perhaps another girl would recoil at the woman's disfigurement--and certainly she would in the future, when she became more worldly--but Maegi had grown up alongside Ramsay, the strangest wolf she'd ever seen. Strangeness was normalcy, for her. And how could she judge, with her ugly paw?

Still, she did not talk, instead lifting a paw to her throat as if in answer. Perhaps her injuries had taken her speech, as well.

"I'm Maegi," she introduced herself, the smile remaining on her face. "Potema and Cicero are my mother and father." It still felt strange, to utter that sentence, but she knew it to be the truth, a fact she could never run from. Besides, it would help the woman, to get a sense of who she was.

"I came here to pray, too," Maegi continued, drawing a little closer to the rock. She had not brought an offering today, armed instead only with incantations.