“Correct,” Hæra snapped. Her kind was chiefly concerned with survival from one tide to the next. That didn’t lend itself to planning years out. Humans made everything too complicated. Jonathan had just said they could keep doing this for a while, so why worry about it?

“Look ahead as you please,” she said. “I’m going back out. The sheep won’t tag themselves.” Nor would the silage be cut and stored on its own, nor the pens mucked out. Nor could a cast sheep right itself again.

“Lass…”

“I’ll think about it when I’m working, all right?” It wasn’t a lie. She’d brood over this silly conversation. “We’ll get it sorted. And don’t—” She raised a hand to point at Jonathan even as he opened his mouth to object. “Don’t doubt Sister Madeleine. I never have, and I never will.”

No matter how long it took. Sister Madeleine had that strength of character she’d mentioned, the one that let her live so differently from most humans. If she could commit to such a restrictive life and endure those privations, then of course she had the strength Hæra craved. And Hæra would never lose faith in that, not in a thousand years.

How was that for thinking ahead?

For a moment, Jonathan looked as if he’d press the issue, and Hæra held her breath. What would she do or say if he did? They argued from time to time, but not about this, the thing most sacred to her heart.

“I’ll be in the office,” Jonathan sighed. “Farmbench needs checking.”

Hæra couldn’t care less about the computer program Jonathan used to track everything, but if it kept him distracted, it’d do. “Fine. I’ll have my walkie-talkie.”

She stomped back through the kitchen, stopping only to retrieve her muddy boots from the back door. Then it was back out to the farm, beneath the gray sky she hadn’t flown into, the clouds she hadn’t pierced.

Yet.

Sheep were stupid, but not so stupid that they couldn’t sense an angry predator when it was right on top of them. Even if said predator wasn’t out for their blood.

“Christ, Hæra,” Jim said as she tried to tag a four-month-old lamb. The little creature struggled and cried in her grip while Brodie snapped at its mother’s ankles to keep her away. The field’s mud slipped beneath her boots. “Let me do it.”

“I’ve got it,” Hæra said between her teeth. She squeezed the tagger on the lamb’s ear, below the vein that ran down the center, and squeezed. The lamb squealed and then bounded away the moment she released it. She sat back on her haunches. “You’re moving out of the cottage?”