Stone Circle "Swing for the fences, son." he must have told you once.

The boy was a lamb with a serpent's scent, Merrit decided, and found he reminded him so much of Keen. The way he folded, and staggered back on his spider-like legs. Tucked his tail against his belly, eyes downcast, to watch the ground, as if the very act of looking up to see the world in all its beauty and dread was altogether too much for him.

A strange emotion stirred within him. He had not seen his sister in so long --

He blinked, and shifted a glance into the woods beyond the cursed child. "Easthollow is a family," he said, though so little remained of his family, that he wondered if there would be truth behind his words for very much longer, "a place where mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters all live together, and love each other, and help each other," by birthright the boy was a child of darkness, and darkness was no sower of light. Would he even understand?

But if the boy had chance to respond, Merrit had no time to give any answer to queries, or observations, or ask any questions back. A new wolf melded from the shadows, and trained eyes saw the movement before he slithered into the light.

If the child smelled of vile things, then this man smelt of the devil himself. Shrouded in a veil of shadows, back stained by copper and burnt umber, as if soaked by the blood of the lives he had taken, and now wore as a price upon his neck. A single eye, peering out from that abysmal reach of hell. A demon, consigned to fire, wrapping long fingers around this child whose innocence still seemed to speckle him with glimpses of light, stars suffocated behind an overcast sky. Dragging him into the darkness, down, down with him.

Merrit's eyes flashed with a sense of panic; to his thrumming heart, he whispered mantras, words his sister had given him before he'd departed from her, to return to Easthollow and all this he had found.

"I know," he said. Still sitting, but muscles now taut in case the other moved in to attack. Serpents swayed, they said, peering from their holes, gauging their time to strike. "He seems an adventurous boy."