---
A lighter set of paws had stepped into the mud and left four neat ovals. The ovals were shallow. The animal did not weigh much. He smelled it now.
Not fox. Not a cat. Something that had eaten grass and then been startled, then settled. He tasted nothing like iron. Nothing like bile. No blood. No fight here.
He stood and kept walking until the trees opened into a shallow bowl where the light pooled. The forest's breath changed in that bowl. It carried a sweetness that did not belong to resin and sap. It carried a clean note like a laugh made out of water. For a heartbeat he did not believe the note. He had learned not to believe kindness before he had learned his own name. Then he saw a figure.
It was a female figure.
