Blackfeather Woods I felt your shadow on the way home.

She crowded close and he let her, welcomed her, folded around her eagerly. She was crying. He could taste the salt in the air and soon, he felt the dampness, and shifted slightly to press himself against her more fervently; but then she began to speak.

The name of the boy did not register much of a response from him (he did not know the children well, and could hardly remember their birth mother), but when Maegi spoke of Cassiopeia his breath hitched. He knew that name — that girl who had brought him to the woods the first time, the one who started him down this path. She had been his friend, he thought. Thinking back on it now (and in the wake of her death) he was not so sure; perhaps she had always been something malevolent. An agent of the forest's gods intent on pulling him in to their dark mire.

He was left with his thoughts and nothing more; he could not speak after all, and would not bring this up even if he could have. It did not matter in the end. What's done was done, and it pained him to see Maegi mourning in such a seemingly endless fashion. Where were the spirits of the wood? Did they no longer grant her - or them - protection?

I still love you, the woman sighed against him, breaking him from thoughts which had no purpose. He nosed against her cheek, planted a shy kiss there with his tongue, and merely held her in silence; he was here, he would always be here. He loved her too much to stay away.