Bearclaw Valley verbena

Looking up at Merrick wide-eyed as they walked, it was a wonder Ico didn't stumble into a rabbit hole or catch a passing bramble. He was more surefooted than he knew, distracted as he was by his dark liege's story, and able to picture it in all its visceral truth.

It sounds a little like a happening back where I'm from; Walnut Grove, he recalled quietly. It was said that one of my ancestors — I think great-grandmother — imbued a spirit when she was young. While out hunting beyond the lake, she came across an elder lone wolf on his last legs. He was weather-beaten and delirious, with blood-shot eyes, and he wore exotic old feathers in his fur; but he hadn't the voice to relate his stories. She stood with him for thirteen hours until he passed. After that she was weirder and wiser, and seemed to know intimate details about faraway places, details that the elder had not conveyed. To be with a creature as it dies... I think that's an act of tremendous strength and magnanimity that comes with its own... well, its own kind of magic.