The little girl stood next to the corpse of the collier’s wife, looking with lost eyes around the ruin of her life in the last ugly orange light of dusk. Deglan froze, afraid she might bolt, but she did not seem to see him. She walked in a nightmare, a frozen painting of the familiar posed in awful mockery of itself. Physically, she was unhurt, but Deglan’s eye took in deep injuries of the mind. So, this was the cat. Deglan should have taken more time with Nape and Canker. They died too easy, damn them.

He approached at a careful pace, not so fast as to frighten her or so slow as to appear the hunter. She did not resist when he scooped her up, her face vacant. She could not be more than three, which was fortunate. Mortal children grew so quickly. Any older and Deglan would have been hard pressed to carry her, but carry her he did, out into the woods and away from the gory remains of her world.

He walked for a few hours through the night with no direction in mind. Putting some distance between the child and her home was his only concern, so that she could not find her way back. Eventually his arms began to quiver from the limp burden and he stopped walking, settling down into the cradling roots of an ancient edad filled with fallen leaves. Breathing a sigh of relief as the tension left his muscles, Deglan risked a glance at the girl. She did not sleep, as he hoped, but continued to stare into the trees. He held her close with one arm and used the other to pull the leaves about them for cover. Deglan settled back and closed his eyes, stroking the child’s smooth cheek with his thumb and asked the Earth to guard her against the perils of a long, chilly night.

He awoke to mist laden rays of sun rippling through the branches. A warm weight lay comfortably atop him and he looked down to find the girl sleeping soundly. She still had the chubby cheeks of youth, rosy from the cold air and her hair was the golden red thought to be lucky by many human tribes. She certainly was lucky to have survived, although she may well wish she had not. Deglan was tempted to let her sleep, but they had to be on their way. Placing a finger gently between her eyes, Deglan lightly rubbed down her nose.

“I am sorry, seedling. It is time we were awake and away.”