Blackfeather Woods my life and all seemed turned to clay

the dead's talisman was taken from her; astara watched, offering no resistance as her dam plucked the heavy burden from her mouth, and settled it on a strangely arrayed cairn. her ghost of a sister hovered quietly alongside her, and astara spared the daycub the briefest of silent glances.

what was their mother doing? her expression remained vexed, but interested -- and somewhere in her mind a voice whispered to make her mother's pains her prey, to scramble the bones and nick the skull from its sorrowful position -- but astara held fast and still.