Neverwinter Forest i stood very still by the window sill

Ceilidh, too, had been too far away to hear the cry of the child, but there was no way she could have missed the voice of Mal; his anxiety set her scrambling forward, a flustered bullet of legs and fur. A feeling of dread flooded her heart, as her memory shot back to that night a few weeks ago, when her friend had found the trace of murderers tangled within the boughs of their forest. What if they had come back?

The thought terrified her, and she willed herself to move faster.

Somewhere along the way she found the trail of that new boy -- Markus? -- and she fell in step with his path until she, too, plunged through the shrubs and came face to face with what Mal and Markus had apparently come face to face with just moments prior. Once she saw they were safe, she barely registered them. Her attention dropped instead to a child on the ground, and her nostrils flared to catch the sting of blood. She saw the stick in his side. And she nearly threw up.

"Oh, gosh," her voice strung too quiet for anyone else to really hear -- and like Markus, she didn't really know, didn't really... understand? what she was seeing. The angle of the stick -- the mere placement of it, within the boy's soft tissues -- oh gosh, oh no.

Trembling legs refused to carry her forward, and she realized, of course, he needed medical help. Her tongue ran faster than her brain. "Hazel -- umm, uh, witch hazel! That'll stop the bleeding -- " but what the heck were they supposed to do with the stick? She spun back around to scour the forest's edge, and hoped and prayed that the boys knew something more. She only knew how to survive -- her parents had raised her a jack-of-all-trades, which effectively made her useless as master of none.