Phoenix Maplewood daddy

What a dull child. Alya wondered who its parents were, to allow it to go around so filthy and despondent. (Or was that just the color of the boy's awful pelage?) "I don't know," she said bluntly, echoing him. "But I am Chaiyya - a guest in this land."

Dark blue eyes raked over the puppy once more. There was no use trying to menace or manipulate the thing, she decided. It was nothing more than a scrap of fur, probably left parentless by the recent fires. What a sad, simple life it must live. "What is your name?" she asked. "Tell me about your father. Perhaps I have seen him around."

But she knew she had not. She'd still met very few of the reclusive forest wolves.