A/N: Sorry! Sorry! I was on holiday! But look, I have a favour to ask…. You know the prostitute in the last chapter? Well, she's going to be rather important, but I don't have a name for her yet… Can I have some suggestions, please?

Daine Sarrasri was sitting on a rotten tree stump just within the forest's borders, poking at the ground with a stick. She was tired, she was annoyed, and she was really, really hungry. All in all, she was not really a good person to cross just then.

The truly annoying thing was that there was no reason for her to be in such a muddled, deprived, desperate, dirty state. She was supposed to be up at the palace, eating vast amounts of food that was too rich for her, drinking champagne until she started to drowse and trying not to lose her temper and insult the Baron of Mimbletonia or some other godforsaken backwater. Honestly, she thought to herself, nobles. More etiquette than sense, and not a spoonful of manners amongst the lot of them.

And it really wasn't her fault that she wasn't up there now. It wasn't at all her fault that Sundancer's foal had been premature, or that the little lady's mare was too narrow to foal easily, or that all the stable boys had passed out earlier that evening. It wasn't her fault that delivering baby horses was a messy business at best, and a disaster area at worse. And it definitely wasn't her fault that the blood covering her arms had upset the palace dogs when she walked past them, or that they had started barking, triggering a veritable symphony of howls, wails, calls, chitters and moans from the other animals, all desperate to know why their friend was covered in blood. She hadn't asked the animals to start swarming the party of young ladies and gentlemen who were strolling through the menagerie, whose screams brought the entire Royal Guard running, and disrupting the whole palace with alarms.

No, Daine reflected, life was definitely being unfair to her today. Which was why she had fled, too mortified to stay and face the questioning tonight. And so she was sitting on a rotten tree stump in a freezing cold forest, hungry, dirty, and quite, quite alone.

Well. Not actually alone. She was never exactly alone; it was just that, at this precise moment, her animal companions were not providing the most uplifting of conversations.

You met Fireheart today. A robin chattered from the tree above her. Daine frowned.

Fireheart? Why do you call Daja that?

Her name is Fireheart. Honestly. Robins.

Why is it her name? Daine enquired patiently.

It is her name. Her name is Fireheart. The little bird started to sing arpeggios, puffing out its breast and squeaking slightly.

Daine sighed. She adored her friends amongst the People, but sometimes they could be aggravatingly oblique. Who gave her that name?

The robin paused for a moment to consider this, and then brightened, as if he had found the answer to a difficult question. It is her name!

The human girl groaned, gave up, ad buried her face in her hands. The only other one of her friends to warrant a nickname from the people was Numair, so why they had decided to give one to a relative stranger was beyond her, let alone such a cryptic one.

There was a rustling at the other side of the clearing, and Daine started, turning. A tall, elegant shape was looming through the leaves, stepping forward daintily into the glade. She waited with baited breath for the creature to move into the newly-forged rays of the moonlight, and then drew her breath in slightly from the sheer beauty of it. There was a stag standing there, his dark fur turned into the cloth of night by the gentle illumination, his antlers silhouetted like blades by the sharp light. There was something heartbreaking about him as he stood there, so beautiful, and so breathtakingly frail, like a spirit from another world. When he spoke, his voice was deep and caressing, the voice of raindrop pearls and tears and woven darkness.

My child… He said, and his voice was so slow, so painfully slow that Daine threw back her head and thought she would die of it.

There are things coming for you, my sister and my daughter… Trust her…Trust yourself…

And she could no longer dee whether the stag was silver and the night black, or the night silver and the stag black, and all these little words seems suddenly to mean very little in the face of that overwhelming, dreaming, lucid, cold, clear reality, and even as she swayed and fell backwards into oblivion she knew that the soft arms of the dreams would catch her.