Stavanger Bay nobody makes me bleed my own blood

She was skulking again. This had been her crutch since childhood — the act of observing and judging the goings-on of the world without fully participating. She had kicked the habit for a time among the wolves of Undersea, but in leaving behind Coelacanth and her family, she seemed also to have left behind her manners.

So. Skulking. Around the edges of the promised land, to be precise, where Moorhen had seen so many packs rise and fall she felt she must surely have attained old age and wisdom — but when she counted back the seasons, she was still only four.

The bay seemed empty, for now. Moorhen stood atop a small rise and looked down on the cursed waters, the bloodstained sand, the unknowable darkness of the forest. It all looked very ordinary, from here. Like something that belonged here in the real world, instead of in her anxious dreams. She knew again that she had been making mountains out of molehills — her memories of this place were the memories of a battered child, and she lived now in the body of a grown and battled-hardened warrior;

she had nothing to fear from this place.

Without anything to lose from it, Moorhen tipped back her sleek, dark head to howl, her voice — hoarse from disuse — asking if, perchance, there was anyone around and, more importantly, if they were amenable to company.