He weathered the complaints. He knew that he was bound to hear the misgivings of the other wolves.

It wasn't enough that a great part of a promise had walked to them in the form of a girl, her steps doddering and uncertain like a newborn doe's. She was nothing like what anyone had expected, and she would pay for her differentness with their guardedness.

Before Kiba met her, not long after his makeshift pack had been formed, he had seen his own kind turn their backs on the future. You were chosen, he wanted to shout at them. Chosen for Rakuen. Instead, as he thought of ways to remove himself from the sight of their lack of self-respect, one of them charged him, "Where do you think you're going?"
Toboe, the youngest and smallest of Kiba's pack, said boldly, "To Paradise."

The elders, all with dead eyes, smirked. Some began to chuckle.

"Why are they laughing?" queried Toboe. That was the hardest for Kiba. The kid was pretty innocent. There was no way to explain to Toboe how cynical others were going to be.

"Because," replied Kiba loudly enough to be heard by them, "they obviously have no idea what it is."

The first full day that Cheza had joined the pack, he decided to take action. While she was still speaking to Toboe, Kiba pulled her aside. "Look at me," he began firmly. Puzzled, she complied.

"Your name is Cheza. From now on, when you talk about yourself, you say, 'I.'"

Cheza turned her head in the opposite direction. She tried to remember why calling herself by her real name made her feel as though her lungs were being compressed, and why her right hand was trembling, but she could recall nothing in her panic.

"Cheza." Kiba's voice was caring, but a direct command. He pushed her head back towards him so they could maintain eye contact. "Say, 'My name is Cheza.'"

"M-m! My." She thought she remembered something now. Someone…someone had been shoving her head into a barrel of water; holding it there. Kiba was still watching her intently.

"My name," he gently prompted.

"My nnn.." Her lungs were raw. She couldn't breathe. She eyes filled with tears. "No!"

Somewhere, locked within her own mind, she remembered that two men were laughing. What is your name? they jeered. Tell us your name.

"You're hurting her!" Toboe had been observing the scene with an increasing sense of alarm. He tried to jump in between them.

"I'm not!" Kiba shouted. "The people who took her hurt her."

Toboe scrambled to the side of the clearing, still wanting to see. Hige looked on at the scene dryly. The last wolf, Tsume, pretended not to notice.

Cheza's face felt hot to her. She was embarrassed that she was impeded from talking about herself. It made her feel funny, abnormal. Shaking off her nervousness, she sighed, still refusing to look at Kiba.

Kiba leaned in, and spoke low in Cheza's ear, still not quite touching her. "Those bars the other day, they were nothing to you. God let you walk through walls. Now you just have to keep walking. Claim the life that He is giving to you."

Cheza stood still, considering. When her thoughts connected to that perfect Voice she had heard in her dream, she saw the scene again, this time more detached. That day had been cruel, but the men's sins were nothing-nothing-compared to the impact of mercy.

"I'm Cheza, aren't I?" Her words streamed out slowly, uncertainly. She knew that before she was this one, she was someone else. She could not recall when she stopped being a girl, when she was taken away, but she did remember that someone had thought of her as more than a thing when she was little.

"Yes," Kiba smiled a little. "You are Cheza." He turned and walked back to the pack.

Cheza shook her head. There was so much she did not understand. "Kiba!" she called suddenly.

Kiba stopped and turned.

"How did you know this-my name?" she stammered.

"Because you're not the only one who has been told things."

As Cheza stared after Kiba, who seemed to be talking to the other wolves, she noticed the pup, Toboe, was still hovering by the edge of the clearing. "It is all right," she coaxed. "Do you want to come here?"

The boy shuffled his "feet" and finally approached her. "What're you doing?"

She let her hand rest upon his head as she replied, "The one known as Tsume found this knapsack. I am going to fill it with the foodstuffs that you and Kiba found, like this bread, and then we'll start walking."

As she stuffed the few but much appreciated bits of food into her bag, Toboe remained entrenched. "But where are we going?"

The other wolves halted their conversation and looked over at the pair. As she felt their attention shifting to her, Cheza recognized that they must not know where their destination was.

"I know it is somewhere south of here. We have to keep moving south," she explained firmly. "But I do not know which direction that is."

Kiba interjected, "I do. The few woods that are left are in the south. It will be easy for us to hide."

Cheza slipped on her knapsack. "And soon, we will never have to hide again. Just think!"

Kiba beamed at her, though only for a moment. Slipping back into his cool façade, he quickly added to others, "We should get started, then."

What seemed like a simple enough task; walking through a bare forest, was proving to be complicated.

Cheza's muscles seemed to have atrophied from disuse and from being given a dubious diet. She was moving, but not at a pace which contented Tsume. He watched her determination as she planted each foot before her, trekking a rhythm of a most deliberate procession.

Sure, he reasoned, Rakkuen will come to us. If we are willing to wait another five years for it!

He continued to observe as time passed. He found himself growing irritated as he saw each of the wolves masking some attachment to her beneath his pride. Couldn't they see who she was, or how meager they were in comparison to The Nobles' troops? Finally, Tsume decided to make an appeal to Kiba. He would speak his mind before he would consider acting on his own.

As Kiba trudged forward in front, and Hige and Toboe flanked Cheza some distance behind, Tsume broached the subject, "You can't really believe that that girl is The Flower Maiden, can you?"

Tsume was not known for subtlety in his approach, and Kiba had grown used to it. "Haven't you smelled her?"

"Yeah. She smells something awful."

"That's the prison you're smelling. It is already starting to fade from her. You know she bears the scent of lunar flowers within her."

He would not be placated. "If wolves were meant to carry out some mission, it sure wouldn't be with any of you!"

Still in human form, Kiba was able to raise an eyebrow at the remark.

"Look at us; a runt pup, a careless porker, and a half-wild human girl. We're not gonna make any difference."

"You're right."

Tsume laughed haughtily before Kiba was able to continue.

"If it were just up to us, it wouldn't be enough. Nothing anybody does would ever be enough to take back The Earth. But it's not up to us. God is bigger than all of us. He can make anything happen, and it is us He wants."

At the moment when the conversation had lulled, Cheza could be heard tripping. Then loudly and harshly falling against something, like a root of a tree.

Tsume rolled his eyes. "Good luck …" he muttered. He stopped walking long enough to let the others pass him before leaping into the thickness of the trees and vanishing.

Toboe turned towards Tsume's point of departure, then looked back at the pack, pained with indecision. Finally, he called, "Tsume, wait up!" and bolted after the bigger wolf.

Cheza, on her feet once more, sighed and shook her head. "That is just great, Kiba," she remarked. "Now we've lost two of our own."

"They're not lost to us," Kiba replied. Still, he could see that she was unconvinced. "They'll see that the only path is the one set before us."

"But how do ya know what that is?" Hige finally interjected.

"You keep praying. And part of prayer is listening. You will not hear if you do not bother to listen," Cheza said quietly.

Hige was unusually silent at this. He chewed his lower lip in contemplation, possibly also thinking of the next meal he would be able to have.

Kiba was by her ear again. "Come on. We can rest in a little while, but for now, we have to keep moving."

"This-I mean, I understand. I have no trouble with moving." Eager to please him, Cheza dared to walk faster, even as her tight muscles attempted to constrict her movement.

Kiba nodded, and Hige took her arm in his "hand." The cheer on his face showed he was done with being quiet. "Ya know, Kiba's always let Tsume on a long leash. I never understood why. He is not worth the trouble, if you ask me."

"He made a choice by coming along with us in the first place. That would be a sign that he desires all this journey has to offer. I suppose we should be patient with him, and let him come back if he wants to."

"He's the one who needs this." Hige's "hand" looped around the collar which he wore loosely. Cheza did not recognize the writing, but it looked a little bit like an "X" to her. "He's been acting like a mutt."

"We'll have to let that go." As she waded through dead brush, she easily snapped off a twig, and began to peel it of its bark.

Hige cocked his head. "You look like you wanna say something."

"I am not even sure what time of the year it is. I thought I did, but the land is so confusing now. Do wolves track those things in the way that humans do?"

"I do. Do y' see how grey everything is, with no leaves? You haven't seen many other animals around either, have you? It's February."

"February?" Cheza started. "But it is so warm here!"

Hige laughed, shaking his head. It sounded and felt different to her than the sneering she had overheard from Tsume a few minutes prior. Kiba turned and looked back at them both. Cheza noticed a wistfulness that crossed over his features.

"What?" she exclaimed. "What is so funny?"

Hige sighed. "Nothing. It's just that you've been gone for a long time."

Breezes rusted the leaves from autumn, cracked and decayed. The branches above her swayed rhythmically. And still, their only witnesses remained crows. Cheza wondered when she would find others, and where they might be. She smiled at Hige, to encourage him along. Then, she tried to jog ahead to Kiba, and managed to catch his "hand" in her own. To her surprise, he did pull away from her. Instead, his fingers interlocked with her own. It felt warm and powerful.

Come back to us, Toboe, she thought silently, it is too dangerous for you both out there.

Toboe knew he could be a real warrior. Tsume would show him how to fight, to protect himself and what he cared for. He would be an adult in the eyes of all who saw him. His own instincts were keen, but the sights before him were new, unfamiliar. It confused him.

He was on his feet, yipping at every new sound. Then his heart would slam against his chest until he felt dizzy from it. He missed the sight of his old grandmother's house, but he would never admit it to Tsume. He could not yet hunt for himself as well as he knew he was supposed to, but he would learn. Tsume was the biggest and bravest wolf he had ever known, and he was letting him come with him. Letiing him!

Toboe was surprised by how quickly they left the woods behind them. In a sloping field with dead, blanched grass, they both smelled the warmth and the sweetness of rabbit before they detected the patch of white with ovid eyes, frozen in terror. Toboe thought to slowly creep towards it, but as he started his descent, Tsume was already there, shaking the animal, the back of its neck in his jowls.

Toboe joyously bounded over to join him in the feast. Tsume nudged the carcass towards him with his snout without remark. They both took care to skin the catch with their teeth, the soft fuzz of rabbit fur beginning to crown their muzzles.

As Toboe took his fill, he asked, "What do you want to do now, Tsume? Where are we going to?"

"Does it matter, Runt? We're surviving."

"I don't," Toboe added quickly, pretending not to care. "I just wondered, that's all."

So after the meal, Toboe hesitantly stepped away from the field, sniffing, listening, exploring. He had to be careful not to breathe too deeply, or the old gunpowder thickness in the air would make him choke. There were pieces of old machines strewn across the distance. They looked like oversized tin boxes, which held nothing, and elongated ebony human arms, reaching to nowhere. It was weird, and it made Toboe so curious that he forgot to be afraid. As he sniffed at a box, a red light on it flashed and began to blink, blink, blink.

The sudden appearance of the light alerted Tsume, who jerked his head towards where Toboe was. His eyes widened. This could not possibly be good.

"Toboe!" he called urgently.

Toboe looked up innocently. "Come on!"

Just as he said this, a thin, metal pole rose from the ground, containing a box. It flashed a red light and beeped.

Tsume lunged toward Toboe, and pulled him by the scruff of his neck. Toboe yelped in alarm and pain. Tsume sprinted from the scattered equipment and heard the roar of a localized explosion. A force at his back pushed him further than he could jump, and the two landed on a patch of dry grass.

Disoriented, but mostly unharmed, Toboe surveyed the damage. "Tsume,-"

"Stay down," he commanded. Presently, the two heard voices.

"Yeah. It came from over there."

The two wolves took on human appearance as they hid behind a mound of dirt. Coming into view were four soldiers: they wore rounded helmets over their heads and were clad in trench coats.

"I don't see anyone. Do you think that an animal set it off?"

"Maybe, but it's possible that it tamed a stray dog or something."

"Really? You think so?"

"It's clever enough for that." This soldier, Tsume assumed, was their leader. The man continued with, "Search the area. After that, scope the woods ahead of us. It would be the most obvious place for it and whatever it has with it to hide."

Tsume gritted his teeth. In his mind, he began shouting, No! No, no! He was already on his feet as the soldiers ran for their reinforcements. "We can move faster than they can. Let's warn the others."

Hige and Kiba both raised their heads as they heard the rapid footfalls of people running.

Kiba recognized the sound first. "It's Tsume and Toboe."

Hige smirked. "That didn't last long."

Cheza finally could see them sprinting towards them in the distance, the trees obscuring her view. "They're panicked," she observed. She weakly trotted towards them.

"Cheza, don't!" Kiba shouted. He knew for certain that if there was trouble, he didn't want her anywhere near it.

Toboe, in his headlong chase, nearly crashed into Cheza, grabbing her by the waist, as Tsume approached Kiba.

"They're coming!" Toboe gasped, out of breath.

"Who is coming?" asked Cheza.

"Soldiers. They're-coming!"

"Aw, heck!" hollered Hige.

Kiba stepped towards Tsume, "You tipped them off, didn't you?"

"Kiba-"

"Your running from the pack led them right to us!" He gently pulled Toboe away and stepped in front of Cheza, protecting her.

"Ah, guys, this isn't the time for a fight," Hige prompted. "We need to figure out what to do."

"We split up," declared Kiba. "Tsume, can you divert them away from Cheza?"

Tsume nodded. "That's easy."

"Hige, you serve as a lookout for any that come from a different direction than we expected. If they get close, deal with them."

"Right."

"Toboe, hide in the tree branches. If it gets to the point where it is too much for either of them to handle, I want you to howl. I'll come back and help."

"Yes, Kiba."

"I'm going to protect The Flower Maiden," Kiba glared at Tsume. "I'll get her out of here."

Cheza unexpectedly found beauty that day.

In his human form, Kiba picked up Cheza and seemed to leap as he carried her through the forest. After a few minutes, he set her down. Their gazes locked for a moment before he spoke. "Stay here."

Cheza nodded.

Appearing again as a wolf, Kiba dashed to some thick, tangled growth on the forest floor. Cheza marveled at the gracefulness of his movements. It was dynamic; art, mathematics, and science melded to a point that could only indicate the work of a loving Creator. She did not even flinch when Kiba tackled the hidden predator and tore upon him with the full force of his jaws. She felt safe.

Just like in her dream.

She thought to briefly mention to The Lord, Father, forgive them, and have mercy on their souls. Then, faintly, Cheza heard howling. Oh, no…she thought.

Just as her heart began to sink, she heard that wonderful Voice again. It came from within her, like a thought, but she knew she was not the source of the idea being conveyed.

"Go," the Voice said simply.

Cheza very quietly began to back away. Kiba was running to attack another approaching soldier, and his back was to her. She continued to retreat into the thick of the woods.

It was not long before she garnered attention. To one dumbstruck armed man, she declared, "I am here!" She then added, "God's justice is upon you!"

He charged wildly after her, but found she had vanished the moment he came close to seizing her. He stared in confusion. It's the trees, he reasoned. She hides well with so many around here. Shrugging, he pulled a slim communicator from his pocket. "I saw it," he told the others.

The reply was immediate: "Let's cut it off, and close in on it."

There were several pockets of fields within the sprawling forest Kiba's pack were called to roam within. Cheza discovered one on her own. There was a dirt road through the forest big enough for vehicles which curved back into the trees when it reached the field. Cheza wondered why. As she walked towards it, she noticed that there was a deep slope, and getting nearer, she could finally see to the bottom of it. It was a ravine.

But she was out in the open. Exposed. Yet she knew she was being asked to stay still.

Here? she questioned silently.

The answer came. Yes. Here.

The troops of Lord Darcia and Orkham already knew of Cheza's general whereabouts, thanks to the soldier who had spotted her moments prior. However, this man who had nearly seized the prize for his master, Darcia, had grown wary of what she could be planning. "It's up to something," he protested to his superior. "It wants us to follow it there. I know it."

The soldier's communicator crackled with an order, "It doesn't matter. Even if the escapee has devised some plan, it's not going to be a match for us or our force. We are expected to press on. That includes you, Pelerdh."

Pelerdh that first thought it was superfluous to pursue her with more than two or so troops, but his commander had assured him that she could be looking for refuge wherever the dregs of her kind remained. The majority of them had been expunged, of course. But if anyone else was eking out an existence away from their perfect empire, they had to be squelched before they banded to form a grass-roots or guerilla counter-movement.

So Pelerdh continued his pursuit. He was told that he himself was enough to believe in. He believed in his own strength, and would use others' to his advantage. It was enough for him.

Cheza could hear the hum of a large engine from somewhere in the distance. She might have also heard voices, though she could not be certain. She could still not discern any shapes or movement yet from her vantage point. Her sense of calm was unflappable.

It was not long before the sound was to her back; there was another military vehicle behind her and the ravine.

Be still. She accepted the thought.

She could soon trace the outline of the wide car through the thinning of the trees. She knew it would not take long before they arrived. Presently, it rolled through the blanched grass, and she remained impassive. She could detect their faces, which betrayed no emotion. She did not recognize any of them.

The scenario played out as simply as a child enacting a game with matchbox cars. They saw her in all of her strangeness, and they accelerated. The road was long, and they were just about to brake, and seize the prize before them, when the ground gave from under them.

Where did the road go? Where did this ditch come from? If the people inside the vehicles had been given time to think, these might have been thoughts. Instead, most registered a final word; Where…? before being overcome with panic, then nothingness.

Cheza heard the two impacts, one of shattering glass and scraping metal upon rocks. No one was crying or suffering from what she could hear. She thought she noted the crackle of a fire which had ignited on one of the cars. She thought to turn and appraise the damage herself, but the inner Voice was firm.

Do not look.

She always responded warmly to that Voice. Considering His Message, she determined that it would not be worth seeing any carnage. Now was the time to think about life.

As she prayed for whatever was left of their souls, and thanked God for her safety, she began to walk, not certain of where Kiba was. She had not gained any sense of direction, but knew that she had not gone so far as he could not find her. She wandered in a diagonal path, until she came upon a rivulet that flowed just before the woods. She climbed upon stones, step by step, until she was able to seat herself upon one of the larger stones in the middle of the stream.

Even in her gratitude, she found herself shaking her head, praying silently, It will not matter. Kiba will be so angry with this one. I left him when he said to stay. He will not want to be with me anymore.

Still, the thoughts flowed away from her as the current of the stream, and she knew she could wait.

Time was never a reliable factor for Cheza, but in her state of prayer, she began to notice that the position of the sun had shifted slightly in the sky. She thought she could guess. An hour, she surmised. She lifted her head, and was startled to see the white wolf looking back at her from the entrance of the forest. The other three wolves were also there, just behind him, appearing in their human form.

Cheza gasped slightly, and hugged her body to herself. She waited until Kiba was ready to speak.

"You lead them away."

"I am sorry."

"You delivered us from them. You kept the pack safe."

There was something inexplicably tender and open about the way he seemed before her. She felt herself relinquishing her defenses. She stood erect upon the stone, straight and confident for the first time in years. She nodded. He smiled slightly, and her arms dropped to her sides.

Slowly, he approached her, wading in the water. His jeans darkened as they grew soaked.

"Kiba!" she admonished. He appeared not to listen.

Finally, when he reached her, he caught her and held her in his arms. She knelt and received him tenderly, lavishing the rarity of affection.

"You are even better than I imagined you would be," he told her. "You are The Flower Maiden."

While being held, she felt his form shifting to wolf. Cheza smiled. She believed she had learned a small component of the dynamics of Heaven.