Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [53]
She made the trip back to her stronghold automatically, not remembering anything of the distance she had traveled from the wizards' moot to her room. She checked her beasts' water supply, which she had tapped from drainage pipes. The system kept the creatures watered automatically, so she would not need to worry about them dying in her absence. She dressed in the traveling garb of a druid and filled her satchel with the items she would need in the Desertsmouth. She would let her druid aspect ascend for this trip, as she would need to give the wizard full control upon her return.
2
"At the edge of darkness is where the light is greatest."
–Chever's last notes
She chose to walk to her destination-a walk of many nights, but one that allowed her to flex her druidic muscles. She would live off the land and revel in moon, stars, sun, and earth. She supposed some part of her would miss these things when she moved to Shade Enclave, but then it wasn't as if she couldn't leave now and…
Anyway, it didn't really matter. When she reined in the druid again after this trip, the wizard would find satisfaction. Best to please that-the strongest of her two natures-first.
As the Desertsmouths rose on the horizon, the bushes and small trees along the banks of the river by which the druid-wizard had been traveling gave way to meadow grass as she neared the foothills. She curved away from the river and followed a brook through sun-speckled groves and alpine flowers.
After traveling for several more hours, with ground squirrels and meadowlarks as her only companions, she broke free of a small patch of oaks and aspen to encounter a cottage near a dip in the creek she had been following. She had passed several cabins along the way, but until now she had come across none that had the aura of promise she sought. This one, though… this one was different.
She peered into a warped-glass window, but the dwelling's single room was empty. A bowl of stew and sheets of parchment on a rough-hewn table told her of recent occupation. In fact, a door between a case of shelves and some gardening tools against the back wall was cracked open, allowing a ray of sunlight to reach in and illuminate dust motes and floorboards.
She would observe the cottage's owner. It had been a while since she had enacted the Change, and it would feel good to assume wolf form again. She performed the ritual and watched lazily as her palms thickened into paws, her fingers withdrew into pads. She felt her nose and mouth pull out as if some god shaped them of clay. Fur sprouted all over her body, she was the earth in spring, shoots of hair emerging from her in a quiet burst. Her bone structure changed, forced her prone. Her knees reversed, her tailbone extended into a plume. The process lasted a mere moment, and a strange voice in her mind wove through it all, as if it, and not she, had commanded the Change.
The druid-wizard veered into the meadow grasses, slunk to a vantage point among them. Her brown ears and blue eyes lifted to just above the grasses' tips.
The man's back was partially turned to her. He was slim yet muscular, and his facial features-silhouetted against the green and yellow of the creek's trees and the sun on the leaves-formed smooth angles against his tousled hair.
He spoke in the voice that had accompanied her Change.
The druid-wizard sidled around to better see what the man was doing. He was crouched near a vegetable garden, shaded under an eave. He spoke to a rose plant.
But his lips did not move.
His voice seemed to fade for a moment, as if the druid-wizard's surprise at the realization forced That Which Was to become That Which Was Not. But then her credulity caught