Lily was pretty sure the people around her had all lost their minds. It was still cold out, there was still snow on the ground, and the wind was fierce at times. Sure, the cold-season had been wearing on for a long while now, and should be coming to an end soon, but not yet! That much should be obvious!

And yet, despite the obvious, the main chamber of the caverns was in absolute chaos as the first, most unobservant or just plain stupidest families decided that it was time to return to their unsheltered, unwarmed rocks out in the valley.

To be fair to her fellow light wings, it was an exaggeration to say that everyone had lost their minds; it was really only a small pawful of dragons actually making the stupid choice she was witnessing. Some people were even making fun of them for it-

Lily ducked as a tiny fishbone was accidentally flung in her direction by a wailing fledgling who could not be more than two season-cycles old. Some people were stupid enough to actually do it, some were taunting them, and others, like that fledgling, were mad their own parents weren't quite that stupid.

Maybe, she thought to herself as she observed the chaos, her own position was also influencing her opinions on all of this. She did not have a rock to return to and was not used to the small amount of personal space out in the valley everyone seemed ready to reclaim for themselves, weather permitting. She had lived in this cavern, for better or for worse, her entire life. She was used to it. Everyone who only sheltered here for the cold-season clearly was not.

All of that to say that desperation to be free of the crowded space might be diminishing the cold in the minds of many of the light wings who had committed to going. It was all a matter of risk and reward. Sure, they were risking a very uncomfortable moon-cycle or two, but the guaranteed reward was some much-needed space to stretch out and a quiet like no other; even the ambient noise of the valley was absent, as if absorbed by the snow.

What would that be like? She tried to imagine it. Willing to brave the cold, willing to look like an optimistic fool if a late storm drove her back to the cavern, all for space and solitude. Willing to leave the cavern for Pyre's cave, to spend the days and nights with him, maybe a little colder but all the happier to help him cope-

She shook her head and choked back a sob, startled and saddened by the sudden, enticing fantasy. It could never happen, and she did not normally fantasize about such impossibilities for exactly this reason, but now she definitely understood. Maybe they did not have old family members out there who would welcome them and be warmed by their very presence, those light wings preparing to brave the cold, but they knew that a similar feeling was waiting for them, alongside the other benefits.

She almost turned her back on the main chamber then and there, disheartened by the sudden and unexpected stab of grief in her heart, but someone chose that moment to come in from the cold, a male who looked half frozen.

A female immediately bounded up from where she had lay, actually quite close to where Lily sat watching the commotion, leaped over to him, and led him back to sit with her.

"So soon?" the female asked worriedly. "I mean, good, because you are as cold as ice, but why?"

"We are moving out today, right?" the male asked, his body quaking as he warmed up, pressed against his mate. "I could not leave you to move the little ones yourself."

"Well, yes, but Claw…"

"Claw set me to guard, but he also told me to take breaks," the male explained. "He does not want me dying of cold on the job. I am taking an extra-long break to help you."

"Well you could have waited a bit, it will be a while," the female said happily, "but I am not complaining. Besides, it is not as if you will miss anything. If they have not gone searching yet, it is because they know it is hopeless."

Lily was now very aware of the fact that the chatty couple in front of her didn't know she was eavesdropping. She didn't want to mess that up, so she refrained from leaping up and running to find Crystal; that might give her away. As long as neither light wing looked back and recognized her as one of the two they were supposed to be guarding against, she could afford to sit here and wait.

As luck would have it, she didn't have to wait long; the female who had been watching the couple's three young fledglings brought them over, and the resulting distraction was more than enough for her to slip away with confidence that not only had nobody noticed her departure, nobody would ever know she had overheard. With more luck, nobody would know what she and Crystal were about to do, either.

O-O-O-O-O

"It sure was lucky Honey did not mind watching the hatchlings for a little while," Crystal purred, flapping hard against the oncoming wind. "Lucky you overheard, too, and lucky the guard was one of those intending to move back out here today. Today is our lucky day!"

Lily could hardly argue with that, though she thought that Honey being willing was less luck and more laziness coupled with greed. She had been sleeping in anyway, and Lily had promised to cover an entire day in return because she had been obstinate at first. Honey had definitely gotten the better end of the deal, if one didn't count the immense peace of mind for her friend that Lily anticipated having for the next moon-cycle.

"And you know what is even more lucky?" Crystal asked eagerly, looking over at Lily with an incredibly smug expression. "You are flying, and it is not yet the end of the cold-season. I told you!"

Lily laughed at that, though she was more happy that Crystal was so positive than amused by the joke at her expense. Her friend was practically beaming with anticipation.

As for her flying? She grimaced, pulling an ugly face. "And I was right, this is putting me off flying for good," she quipped. "It's a grounded life for me, I think."

"Do not even say that," Crystal barked, shuddering as they crossed over the top of the mountains, beginning the downward glide toward the forest. "It is not good to joke about such terrible things."

"Being grounded stinks," Lily admitted, "but it's bearable." It certainly wasn't the living torture Crystal made it out to be. Then again, this might once again be a matter of perspective. Lily knew very well that she was unusual in her ambivalence toward flight, and she had the role model of Pyre, too. If anyone would be able to adjust to being permanently grounded, it would be her, so of course it didn't scare her as much as it probably should.

"I do not think so," Crystal said firmly, landing just shy of the white-coated trees on the edge of the forest. "Okay, what are we looking for?"

"A blue-green little bush with plenty of leaves," Lily reminded her. "They're pretty common around here. Just do not do anything once you find one, call me over." She wanted to be sure Crystal didn't make a mistake in identifying the bush, though that was unlikely, and she also wanted to give a last-minute lecture on the limits and dangers of the leaf…

And maybe, if she felt it was appropriate, to reveal what she had done to herself. She didn't know whether she should, or whether she should even tell Crystal that being permanently barren was a possibility. It was dangerous, and Crystal still might not be in the most stable state of mind to make permanent decisions when it came to eggs and the very uncertain future they both faced.

She would face that decision when it came time, she supposed. It all depended on how things went. First, they needed to find a bush. That would be easy enough.

Lily set off into the forest, Crystal by her side, and began pawing at white-frosted clumps of low-hanging branches and checking colors.

Or… She would be checking colors if there were any to be had. A sinking feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach, and an obvious fact she should have long since remembered came to mind.

"Lily?" Crystal asked, just as Lily was about to speak. Her voice was as downcast as Lily felt. "These do not have any leaves." She swatted at a barren bush in agitation. "None of them do. Is the one we are looking for supposed to?"

"I am such an idiot," Lily groaned, flopping onto her side and lying in the snow, not even caring about the wet cold. "Of course, there are no leaves, the cold-season is still going on!" She had made the same stupid mistake the light wings who were moving out today were making, and for the same reason, being overeager and seeing no problems with something the cold-season precluded. In their case, the weather, and in hers, the natural response of plants to the weather.

"We cannot just chew on the branches?" Crystal asked despondently.

"No, not even if we could figure out which bush it is," Lily moaned. "I don't even know if the branches do anything, or how strong they would be. They could do nothing, or they could kill us outright." It was the sort of thing Pyre had warned her against; not to just assume one part of the plant worked like another. Certain plants had poisonous tops and harmless roots, or vice versa, and that was just one way they could be different. There was no clever workaround for not having the leaves.

"Surely that is an exaggeration?" Crystal asked glumly, pacing in wide circles around Lily. "Kill us?"

"The leaves could if we ate too many at once," Lily revealed. One bush had almost killed her outright, and if she had fallen just slightly the wrong way she could have choked and suffocated on her own vomit. She didn't even know if the branches had added to that danger or not; there was no way to be sure aside from rigorous, careful testing that would take moon-cycles and far more patience than she possessed, to say nothing of the difficulty of coming out to the forest to do so.

Although she did actually know that the branches wouldn't kill, if she went by the fact that she had survived eating a whole bush, branches and all. That still didn't help them here, as the branches of other, now indistinguishable bushes may not be as safe.

"So we came out here for nothing," Crystal huffed. Anger seemed to be replacing disappointment, at least for her. Lily still just felt like a total idiot. She shouldn't have gotten their hopes up, she should have remembered…

"Nothing," Lily agreed. "And the guard is only going to be gone for a little while longer, so we cannot even enjoy being out here. Getting caught would-"

"I know what it would do!" Crystal barked. "Come on, get up, if we cannot get the leaves now then we should at least not ruin our chances later."

Lily rolled to her paws and set off at a quick trot after Crystal, who lashed her tail at anything within reach. Puffs of snow exploded to either side of Lily as she followed behind, coating her face and sides, but she didn't complain; it was her fault Crystal was disappointed and angry.

"We should camouflage ourselves," Crystal barked once they had cleared the forest. "That way we can lose the guard if we get spotted coming back. No point risking anything now."

Once that was done, they were up in the air, but Crystal wasn't satisfied. "I am not going to give up," she growled angrily. "We should watch the guard, wait for a shorter break, slip by the moment the snow melts and plants start growing again."

"Yes, that could work," Lily agreed, glad to see Crystal's anger channeled into planning, of all things. She had expected a more physical way of coping. Maybe it was because they had been so easily thwarted by pure chance.

"And we do not even have to guess at when that is, you can send Mist to go check the bushes and tell us when there are leaves," Crystal continued.

A horrified silence fell over the both of them as what Crystal had said sunk in. Lily had a hard time following her friend's camouflaged form with the sheer amount of guilt and self-hatred that had just struck like a hefty paw-blow to the head. No, a paw-blow was over with too quickly... More like the cavern collapsing on top of her, as it was more painful and suffocating the more she thought about it.

How had she been so stupid?! It was such an obvious solution! It was so obvious, Crystal had come up with it out of sheer irritation!

"Lily." Crystal's disembodied voice was ice. "Tell me why that would not work. I am missing something. Something obvious, something stupidly clear that I just cannot see. Right? Tell me, I will not be offended."

"I…" Lily hesitated, but she knew there was no stopping the truth from coming, not now, and she couldn't make herself cover up her own stupidity. "I could have told Mist to go out and get leaves from the blue-green bush in the forest and bring them back. I could have asked Pina to do it, or Dew, but Claw might have left orders to stop them. Mist and her friends fly out past the valley all the time, so I know that would work. And Dew could have-"

"Lily, stop messing with me!" Crystal barked, cutting off her guilty rambling. "There has to be some reason you did not! Tell me why it would not work!" She sounded desperately angry, clearly hoping beyond hope that things were not as they seemed.

"It would work!" Lily cried out, tossing her head in the frigid wind. "I just did not think of it!"

"It cannot work!" Crystal roared back. "I trusted you! You were supposed to know, to know what to do, to see all the tricks and clever workarounds! You are seriously telling me that you missed one now?! Now, when the stakes are so high?!"

"I know!" Lily screeched, only vaguely noticing that they were gliding aimlessly above the valley now, arguing though they couldn't even see each other aside from as a shimmer in the air. "I was stupid! I missed the obvious! I hate myself for it, I know it is my fault, I know! There's no excuse and I am not trying to make one!"

Crystal roared, a wordless exclamation of pure frustration and anger and betrayal, and dove, the blur that marked her place dropping out of Lily's sight. Lily tried in vain to follow, but she had lost track of Crystal and could not find her again.

She did not call out to her friend, because a large part of her could not bear to continue that horrible moment, and if she found Crystal again, more roaring and disappointment and betrayal would greet her, and she couldn't handle it. She soon gave up looking, knowing all too well that she would never find her friend in the boundless sky unless her friend wanted to be found, and settled for berating herself.

Stupid, so stupid! How had she missed it? If she and her best friend were barred from leaving, but only them, just get someone else to do it! Anyone could have done it with only a little suspicion, she could have asked a favor of a different light wing each moon-cycle. Or if that was too suspicious, she could have had Dew do it! There were so many easy answers along that line of approach, and she had missed them all!

She choked out a strangled sob of rage and guilt. This was her fault, all of the worry and fear Crystal had over her egg was her fault because the egg wouldn't exist if she had seen this from the start, it was all her fault. When would she finally be done making stupid mistakes and missing obvious things? All of her plans and plotting had gone well for a while, but now it turned out she was making a mistake every moment of every day in not realizing what she was missing.

Another failure, another person close to her suffering for it. But she had to continue, because to give up would be even worse. She knew that, and she wasn't going to give up, but failing her best friend still hurt like nothing else.

O-O-O-O-O

Lily spent the rest of that day flying aimlessly, unwilling to be around other light wings for a long while, wanting to be alone with her thoughts; however bleak and guilt-ridden they were. When the guard flew up to her and nervously made sure she knew not to leave the airspace above the valley, she easily assented and said something reassuring about just wanting to stretch her wings. She wasn't sure exactly what she said, just that it was enough to get him to leave her alone without leaving him any the wiser.

But eventually, though she held out long after her stomach began growling and her wings aching, the sun set, and the new bone-deep chill permeating the air drove her down to the ground out of self-preservation.

She knew there was no more stalling to be done; Crystal would be waiting in their chamber, and Claw would hear of it if she spent the night anywhere else. He had never entirely given up on hurting her during his visits, and she was not about to give him any excuse to try harder. She would find another place in the chamber to sleep, because Crystal wouldn't want her anywhere near, and maybe in the morning she could apologize.

When Lily crept into the side-chamber, she saw that of the current occupants, most were asleep. The only one still awake was, of course, Crystal. Her hatchling was still up too, lying on her back and gumming at one of her frills.

Lily tried to slink along to an open patch of stone in the far corner of the chamber, but a warning growl from Crystal stopped her. "Claw will be suspicious if he learns I did not sleep her for some reason," she warned, feeling utterly miserable. "Do you really want him butting in and making this worse?"

"I am not telling you to get out," Crystal said quietly. "Get over here."

Lily did as told, though she was already dreading what was to come. "I am sorry," she whined, sitting tentatively across from Crystal.

"No," Crystal sighed, "I should be."

Lily blinked at her, but then lowered her gaze to the ground. "You really shouldn't. I deserve your anger." If she had more energy, she would be protesting far more vehemently, but she was just too weary to make a fuss, and wary of scaring Crystal's hatchling. That had to be the reason Crystal wasn't angrily hissing or otherwise laying into her once more.

"I have had all day to think," Crystal said quietly, her eyes locked on Lily. "All day to calm down. I was overreacting earlier. I was upset."

"For good reason!" Lily objected. "You trusted me, and I totally missed something obvious." She couldn't help but argue for her own guilt, not when Crystal had every right in the world to be angry like she had earlier.

"It is not fair of me to be mad at someone for missing something," Crystal continued as if she hadn't heard a word of what Lily said. "Anyone could have missed it. I did not come up with it the moment you told me of the situation."

"But I'm supposed to see these things, I was stupid," Lily moaned.

"Yes, I counted on you to have thought it through," Crystal agreed. "Next time, I will think about it myself and ask the obvious questions sooner. You are not infallible. I really should not assume otherwise, no matter how good you are at making it seem like you think of everything." All said in a calm, reasonable tone of voice.

"You really are not mad?" Lily asked in a small voice.

"Not anymore." Crystal shook her head a little, jostling the hatchling on her back and making him growl. A faint purr rose from her chest. "I might have ended up with him anyway," she added. "If the leaves only work for a moon-cycle and are not available in the cold-season, there was more than enough time for Claw to do what he does. Nothing would have stopped this."

"Nothing… If you ate enough of the leaves, it might have made you barren forever," Lily offered in a low voice. "That would have stopped it."

Crystal narrowed her eyes and was silent for a long moment, then shook her head, again doing so slowly as to not seriously unbalance her son. "I would not want that."

"Really?"

"No. I want to have hope." She said it quietly, sadly, without meeting Lily's gaze. "I need to hope for a life after this. Right now that does not feel possible, but I know that the pain will fade someday, and I will not take that away from myself now. I do not think I would have done it even when I was most unhappy. There has to be something to look toward."

"So, there was no way to keep you safe," Lily murmured, trying to ignore her friend's unintentional condemnation of what she had done. Her situation was different, the stakes just a little too high to make the risk worth it. It was a personal choice, and just because Crystal would not make it did not mean making it for herself was wrong.

"And you say 'safe' like this is terrible," Crystal objected. "I cannot think like that, though. He is mine, and I can hate his Sire, but I cannot think of his coming as bad. Not when it might affect how I treat him."

"No, you're right, don't do that," Lily hastily agreed. Crystal's self-confidence when it came to raising her son was still shaky at best; no further blows to it could be allowed.

"So, you see, there is really nothing to be mad at you for," Crystal concluded. "I was just upset. If I had been thinking clearly, I would not have blamed you."

"I'm still sorry," Lily said vehemently, leaning forward and pushing her nose against Crystal's chest. "Even if you are not mad. I made a mistake." Two, really, given Crystal had come up with the answer before her. One mistake in missing it, and another in not letting her friend in on the potential solution immediately. Maybe, even if she had not seen it, Crystal would have in time… But as Crystal said, it probably wouldn't have mattered in the end, though that did not totally absolve her of guilt.

"I forgive you," Crystal hummed, resting her head on top of Lily's. "And I think," she said with a strange little jump in her voice, "that my son should thank you. Maybe when he is old enough to understand."

"Was that a joke?" Lily asked, pulling away and staring at her friend.

"I tried," Crystal muttered, ducking her head in embarrassment and accidentally sliding her hatchling right down to the cavern floor. He burbled happily all the way down.

"It was a little too dark to be funny," Lily admitted, scooting around to lay beside Crystal as was habit.

"At this point, any humor is going to be dark humor," was Crystal's retort. "We are good?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you?"

"I have forgiven and moved on," Crystal replied seriously. "Have you?"

"I'll try." She knew she wouldn't be able to just forget, and it felt like Crystal had let her off too easily, but it was over and done with, and Crystal wouldn't tolerate her bringing it back up. She would have to do her best to move on.

At least moving on would be easy now, with a solution ready to go the moment plants began to bloom again. If nothing else, Crystal's protection was assured.

O-O-O-O-O

The sun was shining, the fledglings were shrieking, and Lily was enjoying a new scene, one brought about by the ever-weakening grip of the cold season upon the valley.

"You are sure the slush is not too cold for him?" Crystal asked worriedly, watching her hatchling paw at a large puddle that he lay on his belly in front of.

"As long as you are here to warm him afterward, he could roll around in it and be fine," Dew said calmly. "Just do not let him drink too much, or his throat will ache from the cold."

"Dam, I wanna play!" Dew's son complained, tugging at her tailfins. "You promised."

"I am almost done here," Dew said firmly. "Anyway, Crystal, just relax. They are sturdier than they look, even at this age."

"Dam…" her son whined.

"Okay, okay," Dew warbled. "We can go now."

Crystal's son burbled happily and slapped his paw down on the still puddle, splashing himself and Lily's paws. He looked up at her with wide, yellow eyes before doing it again.

"I mean, he doesn't look like he plans to go rolling in it anyway," Lily commented. He still didn't walk properly, either, so he would be crawling, meaning Crystal would have plenty of time to stop him. There really was nothing to worry about.

"I know," Crystal sighed. "But I worry anyway. I should, I think."

"That's…" Lily shrugged her wing shoulders. "Okay, I don't know any better than you, but worrying when nothing is wrong sounds excessive. Have you asked your Dam?"

"We are not really on speaking terms," Crystal sighed. "I went to her for advice once, and it did not go well."

"Really? When was this?" Lily cast her friend an unhappy look. "And why did you not tell me?"

"Because nothing changed," Crystal said defiantly. "She has some sort of mental block when it comes to Claw, and I could not stand to hear her say positive things about him. She cannot stand to listen to me bad-talk him either, so we really cannot be around each other. That is not new."

"What about your Sire?" Lily suggested. "Sure, he's sworn to follow Claw, but that does not mean he has to like him. Maybe he would be more reasonable."

"He mostly does what my Dam says," Crystal groaned. "I am sure she will change her tune once Claw is gone. We can reconnect then. It is her fault if she stays away and misses my hatchling's early days."

"It's your life, and I certainly cannot claim to have handled my own Dam any better," Lily admitted, "but I do not want to reconnect with her. I think you letting yours be a stranger will not make that easy."

They were both momentarily distracted by Crystal's son crawling a little further into the puddle, flailing both front paws happily, but once he settled in to his new method of splashing himself and all around him, Crystal shrugged her wing shoulders sadly. "Maybe. I do not know, I will think about it. What about you?"

"What do you mean?" Lily wasn't entirely content to let the conversation turn to herself, but she knew there would be ample time to bring the topic up again later. Even if Crystal seemed resigned to it and not that miserable about the situation, that did not mean it was good, or could not be improved with the right approach.

"Well, you say you do not plan to reconnect with your Dam," Crystal explained. "I am realizing that I do not know what is going on there. You two were at odds long before all of this, right?"

Lily thought back, and realized with no little surprise that she really hadn't told Crystal anything about Cressa past that. Maybe she had mentioned being disowned after it happened, but that was it. "Oh, there is absolutely no chance we are ever going to see eye to eye again."

"What did she do?"

"Let me think… Well, first of all, she never really cared much about me," Lily began. "She spent one afternoon every season-cycle ranting at Pyre and feeding his despair, when she knew he was most vulnerable. She disowned me when I stood up for him, which is probably when you are thinking of."

"That is bad," Crystal admitted, her eyes wide. She looked down at her son. "I could never do something like that, and I would have more of an excuse than her."

"Oh, I'm just getting started," Lily ranted, now more than happy to continue. She hadn't even thought of Cressa as more than an aggravation and an enemy for quite a while, but her actions remained even if she hadn't done anything recently. "Who do you think grounded me? She stomped on my tail with her claws out when I wasn't looking, right before Claw decided to claim us. Then she led Claw to Pyre's cave and got him killed, and she did it to help Claw catch me."

Crystal's mouth was hanging open by this point, eyes wide in disbelief.

Lily shrugged. "I don't think her involvement was important in the end. It was just one more thing to remember. He could have done everything he did without her help, it just would have taken longer." Except for finding Pyre; she didn't think he would have managed that in time to stop them from fleeing. Actually, thinking about it now, a lot would be different if Cressa had not led him to them, or had just been a little slower about it…

Crystal's son helpfully pulled Lily's attention away from her unhappy thoughts by leaning forward and smashing his face into the puddle, and by extension the ground underneath it. He didn't seem bothered by the impact, happily snorting and blowing bubbles with his nose.

"That does not make it any better," Crystal quietly hissed to her before leaning in to watch her son carefully. She had to blink every time he snorted out, but she didn't seem to mind that so long as he pulled his nose out to breathe often enough.

The conversation died out for a while after that, both of them more interested in watching the hatchling than talking about painful subjects. Eventually, Crystal deemed her son worn out and pulled him from the puddle, to his growled protests.

"Just wait until he starts adding words to his objections," Lily joked, hoping to lighten the mood again. "Think his first word will be 'no'?"

"Maybe 'more,'" Crystal mused, setting her son down and licking him clean of the silt and mud splattered across his tiny white scales. "Or 'please,' if we can teach him manners this early on."

The mention of teaching a hatchling manners brought an unpleasant memory to mind, one of Diora claiming that she would do so for Silva, and she shuddered. Dew had not been able to get Diora's approval for taking Silva on occasion, but she had reached out to a few friends with older, well-mannered but spirited female fledglings and gotten Silva some socializing that way, so something was being done for her, but something more needed to happen sooner or later. Aside from maybe manipulating Claw into taking Silva from Diora for good, which was a huge risk and a terrible idea aside from as a last resort, none of her plans could be applied until Silva was old enough to cooperate with her, which was a nice way of saying old enough to be manipulated by more than growls and croons.

"Maybe," Lily agreed. "Have you come up with a name yet?" Honey had decided to go with Wax after all, and Silva had been named from the first day out of the egg, so at the moment Crystal's son was the only one of the three without a definite name to go by.

"Not yet." Crystal let her son crawl free of her grip, only to snatch him up again and hold him more firmly in her jaws. He dangled limply, his eyes fluttering closed ever so often.

"How about-" Lily began, only to cut herself off as a familiar female landed with a splash in front of the both of them, scattering the puddle and startling her.

"Lily," Mist began without preamble, "I need your help." She leaped up into the air only a heartbeat later, and was gone so quickly nobody would have noticed unless they were already watching.

"That sounds really bad," Lily admitted. "You've got him, right?"

Crystal gestured impatiently with her wings, not wanting to nod her head due to the little one hanging from her mouth. The message was still clear enough. She didn't need the help.

Lily flung herself into the air, seeking Mist, who had already disappeared above one of the few clouds in the sky, a giant ball of white.

The moment Lily was in the clouds, she was ambushed by a well-meaning light wing. "Up here!" Mist cried out, bouncing her paws off of Lily's back and almost startling her out of the sky.

"What's gone wrong, and how bad is it?" Lily barked, her nerves frayed by the rapid-fire surprises. "That was risky!"

"I know, I know," Mist moaned, gliding up beside her. The cloud bank they were flying through was great for privacy, but terrible for vision, and Lily could barely make her out. "It is not extremely urgent, it could have waited, but I want this to be resolved quickly."

"Next time, be more subtle," Lily said sternly. She could forgive the occasional bout of immature impatience, but Mist had put her in a small amount of danger by doing that, and it wasn't going to happen again. "Someone could have seen and gotten suspicious."

"If anyone asks, I am going to say I was just startling a random female on a dare from Ash," Mist explained. "And the thing is, I was, because he did actually dare me to do as much yesterday. It was a convenient excuse."

"Be that as it may," Lily grumbled, mollified by hearing that Mist had a great cover and thus had not really been so reckless at all, "what's the problem?"

"A big one," Mist groaned. "Okay, so you know how you wanted Cedar with Liona, Ash with Danda, and me with Root?"

"Yes. Something went wrong with that?" Lily was pretty sure her pairings were the best overall, but she could maybe see Cedar and Danda deciding they liked each other, or Liona going for Ash or Root for some reason.

"Well, I told Liona that Cedar likes her, and I told Cedar that I thought Liona was 'too aloof and uppity for her own good,' which was as good as me admitting I resent her, and that got Cedar to think that she is the most prominent, best choice, so that was one pairing down pretty quickly," Mist recounted.

"So there's no problem with them."

"No, not at all. They are dancing around each other, because Cedar is planning some grand gesture and Liona does not have the courage to approach him on her own, but they are not looking at their other options anymore. Getting Danda and Ash to look at each other was harder because Ash is so oblivious, but I think I have pointed Danda in the right direction. The problem is with Root."

"Has he set his heart on one of the others?" She hoped that was the issue, because it was not actually a problem so long as all three males saw a reason to live, and thus would inevitably end up with someone.

"No, he has set his heart on being a hero," Mist snorted. "I was having a hard time getting his attention, so I tried to go through his Dam, because he listens to her more than anyone else. It is quite offputting, actually, but I could wean him away from her if I had an opening, so I thought it would work, and it did," she rambled. "But when his Dam told him to consider me, he kind of…"

"Yes?" Lily asked, immensely curious. She could tell that Mist was still off-guard from whatever Root had done, so it had to be something truly shocking.

"Well, first he gave in without even questioning her. But the moment she mentioned not challenging, he got all weird and quiet, and when she pressed him, he told her, to her face, that he was challenging no matter what."

"So, it is that kind of problem," Lily exclaimed. "I know the feeling. Believe me, I do. Did he give a reason?"

"Yes, that was the crazy part," Mist complained. "He started spouting all of this nonsense about how there 'had to be a hero' and how he must be the one, because nobody else was even trying and everyone was ignoring all of the terrible things happening, and all sorts of other things I did not even understand, much less agree with. I have never heard him snap at his Dam, and he always listens to her, but this time he went crazy instead."

"Okay… That is odd." It seemed like the sort of thing she was going to have to see and hear for herself, really. Mist's explanation didn't make much sense. "Where is he now?"

"He flew off, and I trailed him from afar long enough to see that he was heading for the shore. Lily, I do not even know how I would talk sense into him at this point, because I do not understand what he means. Can you try-"

"Of course, I'll try my hardest," Lily promised, knowing that she had already committed herself to doing so anyway, in claiming the pack as her fledglings. "Having you along might help, though. A combination of reason and more physical persuasion would probably work best."

"He will flee if he sees me. He did once already." Mist snarled aimlessly. "I am not happy with him at the moment, either, so I would not be much help persuading."

"I'll try to get him to see reason, but if I succeed he'll probably come looking for you to apologize, so try not to rip into him too harshly when he does," Lily warned. "I'm sure he has a very good reason, to defy his Dam. And didn't you just say you did not like how easily he listened to her? Maybe you'll see this as an improvement once it's not so self-destructive."

"I would have to understand it to see it as an improvement," Mist grumbled. "He is going to need a lot of work to make a good mate."

"Most males do," Lily agreed, thinking of all of the spineless, stupid, or otherwise undesirable males she had seen around the valley. She had yet to encounter a male who would make a great mate without some adjustment in one area or another, aside from Granite. "I'll see what I can do."

O-O-O-O-O

By the time Lily spotted Root, a ways down the shoreline and staring out at the ocean, she had a pretty good excuse ready for why she would be intervening, and she was feeling confident.

"If you are my Dam or Mist, you already know where I stand," Root called out without even looking back. "Cedar or Ash, go away before I bite your frills off. Liona or Danda, sorry but I want to be alone."

"How about none of the above?" Lily asked, standing beside him. She had never talked directly to him before, so she wasn't surprised when he looked over, his expression pure confusion-

Which melted into surprise and recognition once he took in her features. "Grey eyes, purple glint… I had not thought my Dam or Mist understood enough to send you. Clever."

Now Lily understood why Mist had been so off-balance; not a dozen heartbeats into the conversation, and she felt the same. "What do you mean by that?"

"It is not obvious?" Root asked, turning his head to look directly at her. His brown eyes were unremarkable, but they way they stared unsettled her. "They sent the victim to dissuade me."

Lily wasn't sure how she should take being called a victim, so she ignored it. "I'm here because I heard there was a-"

Okay, and what is he doing here?" Root exclaimed, his eyes fixing on something over her shoulder.

As if on cue, a breathless male voice barked out at them. "Stay right there! The alpha said you are not supposed to leave!"

"I guess that is what he is doing," Lily deadpanned, turning to look at the male running toward them. She hadn't even thought about the guard, too caught up in puzzling over what Root could possibly be thinking. She must have gotten a pretty good head-start to have made it here before he caught up. "I'm not leaving, I just wanted to talk to Root."

The guard skidded to a stop short of her, throwing sand up in her face. "Claw said not to let you go. He will be mad at me for not catching you. Can you please just go back to the valley and talk to your friend there?"

Lily blinked, thrown off both by the sand and by the polite, sensible reaction to her explanation. "Well, yes, I can, if Root will come with me. I was only out here because he is."

"And you will not tell anyone I failed? Not even Claw?" the guard requested.

"Your secret is safe with me," Lily pledged, inwardly purring at the handy leverage she had accidentally obtained against at least one male on guard duty. Had they not already come up with a solution to the issue of obtaining things from the forest, she would have been ecstatic.

"And me, I guess," Root agreed.

A short flight later, Lily sat opposite Root on a handy little ledge halfway up one of the valley's mountain. She had almost taken him to Pyre's ledge before remembering what would be nearby, well within view, but this ledge, far from there, was just as good.

Root glared at the guard, who had resumed his flight above the valley. "He does not do anything."

"I mean, he certainly does try to stop me or Crystal leaving," Lily lightly retorted. "He just isn't very good at it."

"That is not what I mean." Root transferred his glare to the valley below. "They do not either."

"Look, I was curious when I heard Mist ranting about you saying things she didn't even understand, so I came out here. You're going to have to fill me in on what you're thinking, because I don't already know." She really needed to know more before she could come up with any sort of strategy for talking sense into him. At the moment, she wasn't even sure he was sane.

"You know the stories?" Root asked, still looking out at the valley. "The ones Sires tell fledglings when they are bored, or the ones fledglings tell each other?"

"No, not really. Are you asking about one in particular?" She still felt entirely off-balance, and his strange segue wasn't helping at all.

"No, just whether you have heard a few."

"Probably?" She couldn't remember, and stories that came from Pyre didn't count, but it couldn't be that important if he wasn't asking after specific ones.

"Good enough. You know how a lot of them have the same things? Happy innocents, a big threat, a hero who is either special or absolutely ordinary but rises to the occasion, a pretty female or attractive male in need of saving, a big overlying lesson?"

"Yes. Why?" She did not add that Pyre's stories often mocked or subverted those ideas; it wasn't important. They were just stories, told to pass time and relieve boredom, and maybe to teach a few lessons along the way, nothing more.

"I like stories," Root admitted. "I listen to them even now, and I come up with some every once in a while. It is not hard to follow the pattern. What is hard is being original."

"And this relates to you challenging Claw how?"

"A few nights ago, I started looking at all of this as a story, just for fun," Root explained, looking over at Lily. His eyes were hard and solemn. "And I noticed that we had a lot of the things we needed. A group of innocents, a pretty female in need of saving, a big threat… All this story is missing is a hero."

Lily held in her first response, which was to laugh in his face. He sounded so serious that she couldn't ruin it like that. Instead, she held her silence and hoped he would continue.

"We do not have a hero," he continued, still looking her in the eye. "Claw kills and takes what he wants, and everyone accepts it, because nobody is willing to stand up and defy him. Crystal did, once, and then never again, and Claw won. He took you, and everyone knows that is evil, but nobody stands up and defies him, because everyone who does dies. If this is a story, it is a bad one, because it is missing the hero and the happy ending and the lesson."

"And you think you are the hero we need?" Lily asked seriously. She was no longer amused; he was expressing his thoughts in a very strange way, but she saw the underlying point, and it was a familiar problem, the one that made her creep around and build support and bide her time instead of doing something faster and easier. Nobody was willing to stand up and defy Claw. Nobody, to put it in his terms, wanted to stick their neck out and be the hero.

"I think I am willing to try and be one, because who else is there?" he asked rhetorically. "How else does this end? Someone has to challenge him and win, someone has to take over and put it all to rights. I know I can do the second part if I can just manage the first, and I do not know if anyone else would be able to do both."

"Nobody else?" Lily asked, annoyed in spite of herself. He had so easily dismissed both her and Crystal.

"Crystal, but she has a weakness now," Root sighed. "She cannot do anything without Claw doing something terrible to her son. You, but you seem to be enduring, nothing more. I cannot see you standing up and challenging Claw to his face, let alone succeeding."

Lily opened her mouth to argue that, and then closed it again without actually objecting. Of course, he couldn't see her doing anything like that; she was working hard to not seem rebellious and courageous in that way! If he did think she would do that, then Claw would think the same. She shouldn't be annoyed, she should be content, knowing that a surprisingly astute, if strange, observer didn't suspect what she was doing.

And really, she didn't want to be the hero, like he was saying. The hero stood up, defied, and counted on luck or skill to win through. She was setting things up so that it was all skill and minimal risk. She wasn't a hero, she was a leader, but only the stories Pyre told ever had anything like that.

"What makes you think you will be different?" she asked instead. "My brother, Granite, thought something similar. I am sure others went into their challenge sure they would be the flukes, the ones to win by skill or just by dumb luck."

"I know what I am doing," Root explained calmly. "I can think about it. Claw will have a flaw, all villains do. Something that can be exploited."

He did have a flaw, Lily thought to herself, but it wasn't a physical one, or anything that would help in a fight. His flaw was that he was powerless without the acceptance of the pack, and she was going to exploit that for all it was worth. But Root couldn't use that.

"I am going to fight Cedar every day and train," Root continued. "I will work on my strength, on my aim, on my tactics. And if this was a story, I would say it was close to the end, because what he is doing cannot continue."

Lily closed her eyes for a long moment.

"And most importantly, I will not let myself be talked out of it," Root said defensively. "That always ends badly in stories."

"Life is not a story," Lily said slowly, her eyes still closed. "There is no fairness, no balance, no lesson that everything has been working toward giving, no plot to follow, no patterns, not like that. It is foolish and dangerous to think that it is."

"But if I do not try then I will never know, and I cannot live with that," Root said calmly. At no point had he lost his temper while they were talking, which was a far cry from what Mist described, but Lily almost wished he would. At least then she would know she had challenged his beliefs in some way, that he felt the need to strike back and drive her away. This just felt like unshakable certainty.

"There are other ways to fight," she offered. "If I could show you one of those, would you at least hold off on challenging?"

"No. I have made my choice. I will be the hero."

"You will be the corpse added to the dark side of the valley. You will be the reason another female is consigned to Claw when she would rather have you." Lily opened her eyes and fixed him with her strongest glare. "Does that sound like a good story?"

"No. But like you just said, life is not a story." He met her glare and stared back confidently.

"You are a fledgling who is making a stupid mistake out of foolishness," she said bluntly. "Your heart is in the right place, but not your mind."

"I will save you," he replied. "You, Crystal, everyone. You will thank me then. I will be someone worth thanking, then."

Lily shook her head and leaped off of the ledge without another word for no more reason than she was out of other words; she had never seen such a strange confidence. He seemed… righteous, almost, and she could not muster any real argument that she had not already tried.

She wasn't giving up, of course. If nothing else, this was a challenge she couldn't resist, because he was so different compared to everyone she knew. Different to what she had heard of him before now, too, which was something she was going to look into soon.

But not soon enough; she was going to have to tell Mist that an apology was not yet on Root's mind.