A.N.: Important! For the reader's (and my own) convenience, I am writing this entirely in English. Please remember to pretend that all dialogue is Old Norse.

Please read this note: I've noticed most readers aren't continuing past the first couple chapters. I would appreciate you letting me know how I'm losing you - writing, plot, both, neither... I'd like to know how I can improve, so it would be awesome if you'd take a second to let me know.

As usual, there was no sleep to be had in the dormitory - at least, not for Eryn. As was her habit, the five-year-old waited until all the others were asleep before sneaking up onto the rooftop, her green eyes sparkling in the moonlight. As she laid on her back, losing herself to her survey of the stars, her mind returned to the events of that afternoon. It was winter in Denmark, and the fireplaces blazed, flames flickering in a mesmerizing dance.

Apparently, touching fire was not something that people did. Then, why hadn't anything bad happened to her?

Maybe Sister Mary-Katharine was right, and I'm some creature sent from hell - No! She shook her head forcefully, desperately, against the memory of the nun's panicked shrieks. I'm not evil!

Then, what was she? Yet again, she found herself wondering from whence she'd come, and yet again, her imagination ran away with her, conjuring images from the simplified stories she had read. Achilles, Isis, Baldr…She always had loved mythology.

Eryn shook her head, forcefully dismissing the wild speculation. Sometimes, stories were just stories; some things really were impossible. Once again, her mind returned to that afternoon. For a fraction of a second, she, herself, almost doubted that she'd actually made contact with the fire. Maybe she'd just gotten close and only thought she'd-

Then, she remembered the look in Sister Mary-Katharine's eyes as she'd warped her perceptions, forcing the situation to conform to her conception of the bounds of reality.

"No," Eryn whispered, not even registering the fact that the word she had uttered had not been Danish, "I won't let that happen to me."

She didn't understand what had happened, but she'd still rather know. She thought back to her lie, the instinctive rush of words that had filled her mouth with reassurances, explanations.

At least I won't lie to myself.

Besides, there were countless reasons the normal rules of "reality" didn't apply to her. When she had first come to this abbey that doubled as an orphanage, she had spoken no Danish, uttering instead fragments of what sounded like Icelandic. There were other oddities, too - her unnatural body heat, for one.

When she had first come to the abbey, the nuns had been afraid she'd had a fever, but no other symptoms of illness had ever appeared, and it had never subsided. The doctor had given them a long and complicated - but, apparently, "quite simple, and more common than you'd think" - explanation involving circulation.

Then, there was her life before the abbey. When she had mysteriously appeared on the doorstep one night, about two years ago, the nuns had eventually gathered from the girl's broken answers to their questions that she didn't seem to remember anything. Trying to piece together her history for themselves, they had guessed her to be about three years old; to explain the language confusion, they had concluded that one of her parents must have been from Iceland; to explain her lack of memories, they'd concluded that she must have suffered some trauma, and was repressing the memories, "the poor, little dear..."

But that wasn't quite right. She did have some memories, they were just...fuzzy. She heard a woman sing in that unidentifiable language she somehow, inexplicably, understood. She saw…fur. Soft, grey fur that smelled of a forest of linden and pine. She felt the wind in her face as she ran across the snow, bursting with exhilaration, the moon high above. Most clearly, she remembered a pair of warm, hazel eyes.

And then, she'd found herself alone on the steps of the abbey, not knowing how she had come to be there.

Eryn could not make sense of her past, but as she lost herself in the fragmented memories, with a breeze ruffling her flaming red mane and the moon high above, she finally found sleep.