Coco

Coco's fingers drummed on Gianduja's handle as she looked out the window, deep in thought. Her minigun was in its compact handbag form and the weight of it on her lap centered her.

Velvet, who was way more observant than the other two oafs on her team, noticed her nervous fidgeting and quickly elbowed Fox, who used his semblance to open a line of communication between them.

Fox used his semblance, and she could hear his calming voice echo inside her head along with the weirdly familiar sensation of being watched.

Velvet wants to know why you're restless.

I'm not. She replied.

You clearly are worried. Are you worried you're going to get mud on your outfit or something?

She threw a sly grin at Fox and quickly snapped back at him through their link, thankful for the distraction. Fox always knew how to cheer her up.

No, I'm worried you might trip on a rock or something. Being blind is such a curse, isn't it?

Fox's lips slightly turned upwards, and just as their verbal duel was about to begin in earnest, Professor Port cleared his throat.

"We're a few minutes out from the drop site, students. You might want to take this time to clear your mind and steel yourself for the coming battle. After all, a huntsman's greatest weapon is his mind! I cannot tell you how many times my own quick thinking saved me from becoming the lunch of some nasty creature of darkness. On one particular hunt, one of the plans I formulated during the quiet before the battle saved my life! That King Taijitu was a crafty one, yes, but in the end, I defeated it, using nothing but a plan, a lamp, and some dust rounds I'd stashed in my back pocket. It was a difficult fight, yes, but I had something that Grimm possibly couldn't match- the ability to adapt and..."

Coco cut him off before he could build up any more steam. "That sounds like a wonderful story, professor, but maybe you should save it for after the mission. After all, we're landing in a couple of minutes, and I'd hate to see one of your stories get cut off before we get to the juicy parts."

Port threw his head back and laughed. "Yes, you're right, Ms. Adel. I do tend to get carried away when I talk about my exploits. Maybe I'll save that story for until after we finish the mission. It can be a post-hunt treat for you youngsters!"

The members of team CFVY collectively grimaced and the Bullhead's small cabin grew quiet again. After sitting in silence for a while, Coco wouldn't take it anymore.

She had questions, and simply beating herself up wouldn't give her the answers. She turned to Professor Port and asked him what she wanted answered.

"This isn't a regular search and destroy mission, is it, Professor? If it was, there'd be no reason for us to shadow two huntsmen otherwise."

Professor Port didn't deflect the question or try to stonewall her. That simply wasn't his style. He simply looked her in the eyes and gave her the answers she wanted.

"I had hoped not to worry you or scare you with the strange nature of this mission. Skittishness leads to blunders in battle, after all. But, yes, Ms. Adel, this mission differs from the usual search and destroy missions we hand out to students. Such missions are usually very clear-cut, to allow you youngsters to be tempered by the flames of real combat while keeping you relatively safe because there are very few unknown variables involved. This mission, however, is something we are going into almost blind. We know next to nothing about both our opposition. This was the reason your briefing packets were so regrettably small."

Coco snorted. That was a gross understatement. The 'briefing packets' the Professor had given them were a single sheet of paper with everything they knew on it, and half the page had been blank. The other half had been filled with vague bullshit.

Air travel wasn't very common because of the danger of flying Grimm, but the richer inhabitants of some of the kingdoms preferred it because it was faster than traveling with a caravan, and to ensure that they reached their destination, most of them hired the best huntsmen money could buy.

On one such particular trip, one of the huntsmen escorting the unnamed VIP had a sensory semblance that allowed him to sense the number of Grimm in a large radius around him, and he had noticed that a certain forest to the far south-east of Moutain Glenn had a suspiciously low number of Grimm. One of the pilots had also seen plumes of black ash rising out of the forest, which meant that the Grimm were being cleared out by someone.

The huntsman had sensed something was amiss, and being an ex-alumni of Beacon, he had told Ozpin about it, and Ozpin had asked them to scout the forest along with Port and another non-Beacon huntsman he hired.

Someone or something was clearing the woods, and whatever was doing it probably wasn't killing Grimm by the dozen out of the goodness of its heart.

Coco ran through the possible reasons in her head for the oddities in her head. Bandits making a new camp might be clearing the woods so they could live in it, or the Grimm might be having territorial conflicts with the animals in the woods. There apparently was a settlement close to the woods, so they might have cleared the woods. There were too many possible explanations, and Coco didn't like the fact that her team didn't know which one was true. Uncertainty was good to get the blood pumping, but too much of it just made things stressful instead of fun.

While she was spacing out, Velvet had finished up the conversation with Port.

Velvet put a hand to her chin. "But we were still asked to do this mission, which means that you think we can handle it, right, Professor?"

The only reason they'd been offed this mission was because they were the only ones in town the headmaster could call on since most of their peers were still out of town, enjoying the last days of their holidays. The only reason all of them were in town was because of Velvet, who wanted to go to the combat exams for the people without transcripts so she could get a couple of photos of the attendees' weapons, and they didn't want her to go alone.

While they'd been waiting for the day of the combat exam, Ozpin had asked them if they wanted to take a mission, and they'd all agreed since it would be good to start the new term on the high of a mission well done.

Port nodded. "I have the utmost faith in your abilities, Ms. Scarlatina. But it always pays to be vigilant and wary. Make sure to follow whatever instructions Mr. Rosenrot and I give you, and you should be fine."

The intercom above their heads flashed green, and the pilot's voice came from it.

"We're landing. I'll be opening the left aft door in a second."

The Bullhead landed with a soft thump, and they all got up. Their seats began to fold up into themselves before rising up to the ceiling as the left aft door opened up.

Yatsuhashi was the first out, giant blade in hand. Fox was next, and then he was followed by the rest of them once he and Yatsuhashi had given them the all-clear.

Professor Port hefted his blunderbuss axe. "Well, then students. I'll perform a preliminary sweep of the woods before calling you to join me. In the meantime, stay close to the Bullhead and protect it from any Grimm that wander in too close."

As Port left, they quickly spread out. Coco and Velvet both lept on top of the Bullhead and stood back to back to keep an eye on both sides of the forest surrounding the little clearing they'd landed in. Fox and Yatsuhashi took their places near the front and back of the Bullhead.

After they'd taken their places, the front door of the Bullhead opened, and Rosenrot stumbled out from the co-pilot seat.

He was dressed in maroon military fatigues with white accents and a red headwrap that hid everything but his eyes. His massive sniper rifle was on his back. After he managed to steady himself, he looked up at Coco with a sneer. She returned the look, if only because his garish clothes were hurting her eyes.

"What're you doing up there, brat?"

Coco resisted the urge to smirk at the man. "It's basic military tactics. Didn't they teach you about the advantages of elevated vantage points at your academy?"

The man's sneer became even more pronounced at her dig. Sure, it was a low blow to make fun of him for dropping out, but he'd been the one to start it.

The man opened his mouth to reply, but Coco cut him off by expanding Gianduja into its minigun form and nodded in the direction of the woods.

"There a stray Beowolf coming at us. Do you want me to take it, or are you going to?"

In response, the man pulled his rifle off his back, kicked out its tripod, and pulled the trigger. The rifle gave out a magnificent boom that caused the birds in the trees around them to fly off. The Beowolf slumped forward and turned to ash. Coco whistled.

The next two hours were more or less the same. The pilot of the bullhead was most likely anxious, Rosenrot was irritated, and the rest of her team was on edge. The combination of negative emotions was probably intoxicating to the Grimm, which was probably why they were trying to run at them. The surprising part, however, was how young all the Grimm rushing at them were, and how little of them there were.

Port should have been back by now, but Coco wasn't worried about the old man. He could take care of himself.

Rosenrot's rifle dispatched them with mechanical precision, and soon enough, the resounding boom of the rifle and the resulting carnage grew boring. She relaxed a fraction, and her scans of the treeline became less scrutinizing as Velvet became Rosenrot's spotter instead of her.

She shouldn't have gotten relaxed, because shit was just about to hit the fan.

Rosenrot was also growing bored with the busy work he was doing, and he had started simply killing anything that came out of the woods. So when a humanoid something walked out of the woods with its hands in the air, Rosenrot had shot that something in the heart before any of them could even blink an eye. They saw an aura shattering, and the person fell over.

Shit.

"Rosenrot, stop! Fox, Yatsuhashi, check on them, see if they're still alive."

Yatsuhashi nodded and Made his way to the girl's fallen form.

Rosenrot looked unconcerned as if he just hadn't almost killed someone. "It's either a humanoid Grimm or a bandit. Either way, it's nothing we have to lose sleep over."

Coco didn't even bother to reply to that and kept her eyes on Fox and Yatsuhashi.

They got closer and closer, and Yatsuhasi bent down to check the person's pulse.

As soon as Yatsuhashi bent over, the person on the ground quickly got up by swinging their legs in a circle and using the momentum to right themselves. Within the blind of an eye, the person had drawn something from their back pocket and stabbed Yatsuhashi twice in the throat. His aura held, but he was disoriented.

Fox moved to engage, and the attacker had wised up after Rosenrot shot them and was now using Fox to shield them from the two people with guns. They traded blows, the attacker always making sure to keep Fox in front of her.

It's a girl. I'm trying to subdue her, but she's making it hard. Get Velvet to give me pointers, or I'm going to end up hurting her! Fox told her through his telepathic link.

Fox moved forward, aiming to hit the girl on the head with a swift roundhouse kick, and she moved forward in kind, slipping past Fox's leg before pivoting and diagonally slashing with her right. Fox staggered back, and Yatsuhashi had thankfully recovered enough to get back into the fight and force her back.

Rosenrot was predictably trying to get a shot in through her teammates, and she dropped down in front of him to put a stop to that. He began to yell at her, and she gave him no mind. She wanted to help her teammates subdue the girl, but with Rosenrot compromised, she was now on Grimm duty. A couple of Grimm darted into the clearing, and she cut them down with controlled bursts of gunfire.

"Velvet!" Coco yelled up at the girl.

"I need a bit of time. Her style is erratic."

"Keep at it."

Yatsuhashi pulled his sword back and then slammed it into the ground, and the ground shattered with the force of his blow. The girl dodged and then took to the air to avoid the shockwave, but the terrain was now uneven, which allowed the nimble-footed Fox to get a leg up on the girl.

As the boys shook off their respective injuries, they began to work together, and with the help of Fox's semblance, they moved in terrifying sync with each other. When one created an opening, the other was there to capitalize on it. When one of them took a hit and was pressured, one covered while the other recovered.

The girl began to fight even more viciously to make up for the disadvantage, the left pushing away and deflecting blows while the right aimed to maim and kill with every connecting strike. The two boys had to forcibly keep the girl from focusing completely on one of them because as soon as one of them became the girl's sole focus, they began to buckle under the force of so many blows.

The girl was good, but she probably had little to no experience fighting someone with an aura, given how she mostly went for blows that would kill or maim. Her attacks hurt when they connected, yes, but they weren't as disorienting as blows that hit areas that caused the most pain or blows that pushed the opponent around.

"Got it!" Velvet squeaked out. "She's going to try to rush you. She's going to duck, then the left's going to try to stab at your left knee, then she going to rise and go for a diagonal cut with her right and two stabs at your lungs with the right. Then she'll twirl, and use her right to try to spear Yatsuhasi through the shoulder. Then she'll turn to you and go for an overhead blow with the left and then slash at the neck with the right. You heard that through the link, right, Fox?"

Even before the girl began her new set of attacks, Fox was already reacting to them, darting back just as the girl began the stab with her left. She missed, but she adapted quickly, using the force she'd built up to try and slam her right hand spear's blade into Yatsuhashi's unarmoured shoulder. He took the blow on his sword and attempted to backhand the girl, which caused the girl to dart back. Fox rushed forward to keep the pressure on her, and the girl, now feeling backed into a corner, decided to continue with her old plan despite the circumstances changing because she simply didn't have the time to come up with a new one.

Coco smirked as Fox side-stepped the overhead blow and then slipped under the right-hand spear's slash and then ducked, hitting the girl with a liver shot.

The girl stumbled, and Yatsuhashi capitalized on that, smashing the flat of his blade into the girl's skull, finally causing her to drop to the ground.

"Rosenrot. Cover us while we secure the girl."

The man was foaming at the mouth. "You saw how she fought. She's probably a bandit scout or a part of the main encampment. We should kill her and just be done with this. Bringing her back with us poses a significant security risk. Her friends might try to bring down the Bullhead to get her back."

She saw what was happening here, and she didn't like it one bit. Rosenrot was afraid that he might take a hit to his already spotty reputation and be paid less if they told Ozpin that he'd tried to kill a fucking child. In order to make sure that no one big found out about his mistake, he wanted to kill the girl and explain away the causality to Port by claiming that the girl was a bandit.

"We're not killing anyone. Keep the Grimm off our backs, or you won't like the picture I paint of you to Port."

Rosenrot shut up, and she called out to Velvet. "Call Professor Port back here, and brief him about the situation."

Velvet nodded, and Coco jogged over to the girl's fallen form.

Yatsuhashi was checking her pulse while Fox was standing by him.

Who do you think she is? Fox asked her through their link.

Coco looked at the girl on the ground. She was about her height, and slightly tanned. She had a threadbare grey jacket on, a pair of thick pants, and a white undershirt underneath it. All of her clothing was stained intermittently with dark splotches of dried blood, dirt, and grass stains. Her nails were long, chipped, and dirty, with clods of dirt on the edges and under them. Her hair was filthy and wild, and the clumpy mess was being held back by what looked like a piece of dried grass.

Her face was what interested Coco the most. She was a spider-faunus, but the mandibles in the corners of her chin or the black marble-looking eyes in pairs under her human eyes weren't what interested Coco. The girl's face looked worn, and she knew that there was a story as to how it got that way.

I don't know who she is, and what going to happen to her is a problem for Ozpin and a dozen other bigwigs. For now, let's just get her into the Bullhead. She replied back.

Fox pulled out some bandages from his field kit, and they used that to bind the girl's arms behind her back and then used the remaining to tie her legs together. Coco retrieved the girl's spears and tossed them to Fox, who caught them and tucked them into his belt.

Yatsuhashi gently picked her up carried her over to the Bullhead, and lowered her onto the floor. Professor Port walked out of the forest just as Rosenrot began to argue with Coco again.

Fox used his semblance and filled Port in as he walked over, and the senior huntsman cut Rosenrot off with a withering glare as he got close enough.

"Get into the Bullhead, students. I daresay that that girl right there was the cause of the disturbances in this forest."

Coco had questions, and she could tell her team had questions too. But there was a time and place for questions, and this was not it. They quickly filed into the Bullhead, and the pilot took off, and as their seats lowered down from the ceiling, Yatsuhashi picked the girl up and sat her up on the seat next to him, keeping her steady with one of his hands.

"So..." Coco began. "Care to fill us in, Professor?"

Port sighed. "This is more of a mess than I'd hoped it to be. Well, then Ms. Adel, one of the reasons why I was chosen for this mission alongside you is because of my skill in tracking and bushcraft, borne from years of hunting Grimm. Professor Ozpin suspected either a bandit camp or a new type of possession Grimm similar to an Aboleth or a Bukavac that ate its kin to improve itself and spat out mass it didn't need. My purpose in this mission was to either find the bandits and report back, or find this new kind of Grimm and dispatch it along with Mr. Roserot and you before it got too powerful. However, I found no evidence of either. Instead, all I found were signs of someone living in the woods."

"They were well-worn trails, and I followed them to find several snares and crooked saplings that might have been used to set snares at one point. I followed the trails to their source and found a cave with a rather large pit dug out in front of it. I used my weapon to fell a tree and used it to cross the gap into the cave, and found signs of someone living rather frugally in the cave. There were little in the way of personal effects, and all of the girl's valuable possessions were in a little alcove in one of the walls of the cave."

Port pulled out a broken bow and a pistol from his coat.

"I found these there, and since the bow is broken and the gun has no rounds left in it, I assume these are sentimental to her in some way. At first, I wanted to leave the cave as it was in case I found whoever lived in it, but then I noticed that the bow had a huntsman's emblem stamped into the center of the grip. Whoever this girl is, she might have crossed paths with the huntsman who owned that bow, and finding out what happened to them might give us an idea of what happened to her. With that in mind, I retrieved the bow, and then retrieved the pistol as an afterthought."

"I doubt that took you two hours, Professor."

He nodded. "After that, I decided to check up on the settlement in the area, and as both Professor Ozpin and I suspected, it had been...ransacked by bandits."

Professor Port gave them all a minute to digest that information.

"Bandits attacks usually leave no survivors, as anyone the bandits don't kill are killed by the influx of Grimm that follow them. I believe that that girl somehow managed to get away during the attack and has somehow survived in the woods for all these years. And judging by the state of the weapons on Mr. Alistar's belt, she has fought tooth and nail to stay alive."

They spent the rest of the ride to Vale in silence.

Charlotte

When Charlotte woke, her mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton. She was lying on something soft, and something cold was wrapped around her left arm. She kneaded the soft thing under her with her fingers and found that it was a bed. It felt strange, knowing she was raised above the ground. It felt almost unnatural. The room she was in smelled of something overpoweringly sharp and unpleasant, which helped distract her from the pain. She was wearing something light that covered her completely, and the fabric was thin and airy.

Wait. Where was she? Unbidden, memories of her last fight flooded her mind. She'd woken up to a loud boom noise somewhere in the forest, and she'd followed the sound to a clearing with a bunch of people surrounding an airship. She'd observed them for the better part of two hours and had concluded that they were huntsmen because they only seemed to be killing Grimm and refused to leave the clearing. Their clothes didn't look as worn as the clothes the bandits wore, and their weapons were better made as well.

After deliberating for a bit, she'd decided to go for a simple approach. She would walk out of the forest, and seeing that she was human, they wouldn't attack her, and then she could just convince them to take her with them. She didn't know how he was going to do that, but she knew that she had to do it.

In hindsight, it had been stupid, but a drowning man did not scoff at the quality of the rope thrown at him. She had grown sick of the woods and had been wanting to escape her lonely and pointless existence for quite some time, and when an opportunity presented itself to escape, she lept on it recklessly.

She remembered getting shot, and then fighting with those boys when one of them tried to lean in and finish her off. That had been exhilarating and had also been frightening, given that that was the closest to dying she'd gotten in the last couple of years. She fought like a cornered animal.

Then she'd made one mistake too many and had been hit in the head with the flat of the large boy's blade, and now she was here.

She knew she should feel afraid, but she didn't feel the need to. The boy had taken her down, but he didn't kill her, which meant that she wasn't in any danger. If they wanted to hurt her, they would have done so in the forest itself.

Maybe they'd thought she was a bandit and had taken her prisoner as a result? But there were no chains or bindings keeping her confined to the bed, and the only thing that even resembled a manacle was the strange plastic band around her left wrist.

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, and she regretted it immediately. Her head spun, and she felt like she was going to throw up. Immediately, a pair of hands were on her shoulders, gently forcing her to lie back down. She was in no state to run away.

"I'm sorry dear, but you need to lie down. You still have a light concussion. Your aura is helping you heal, but you need a couple more hours until you can sit up."

The woman who pushed her down was wearing all white with a blue strip in the middle, and she looked kind. She doesn't look like a jailer, and that meant that the whole 'taken prisoner' thing was not true. There were feathers in her hair, and her nails were sharp. But the thing that nearly made her cry was that she was speaking to her. Not growling or wailing or chittering, but actually using words that she could understand.

She felt tears welling up in her eyes and shook her head to stop them, and that brought about another wave of nausea. The woman did something with a board next to the bed and then the front half of the bed rose up. Struck by the fear of falling, Charlotte tried to balance herself by flailing around, and the woman pushed her back into the bed again.

After the bed finished moving, she noted that she was now almost sitting up, leaning on the raised top half bed for support.

"Sit tight, dear."

The woman left, and Charlotte wanted to call her back but found that she couldn't. She remembered the words and how they sounded but had no clue how to make them. When she tried, her tongue felt clumsy and all that ended up happening was a rasp escaping her throat.

In the time it took for the woman to come back with two other people, she had tried and failed to form any words. Her tongue was now warmed up, but shaping the sounds from her throat was difficult like she'd forgotten how to. Her throat could make noise, but nothing resembling actual speech. Had years of going with speech rendered her mute?

The steady click-click-click noise of shoes on the smooth floor of the hallway outside of the room broke her out of her panic.

Just as she looked at the door, a man and a woman entered the room. The woman looked serious and was dressed in a white shirt along with a black skirt. She looked at her like she was sizing her up, and Charlotte returned the favor with her human eyes while her other ones focused on the other man in the room.

He was silver-haired, with a green shirt that hugged his neck along with a black jacket that had bronze buttons. He held two cups in his arms and quickly took a seat on the stool on the side of her bed while the woman stood beside him.

"While the doctors objected to me giving you some cocoa, they agreed to let me give you some watered-down tea with a lot of sugar in it. Here."

His voice is soothing, and it feels sharp yet cool at the same time. She forgets the woman and focuses on him.

The man handed me a cup. I took it from him, and when he took a sip, I mimicked him. It was very sweet, with a hint of bitterness hidden in it. After the first sip, I simply tipped the cup into her mouth and gulped the sweet liquid down as fast as she could. When that was done, she noticed that there was still a layer of sugar at the bottom of the cup, which she licked at with her tongue and then crunched on.

There was a chuckle, and she looked up to see the other two inhabitants of the room smiling. In the woman's case, it was a slight upward tilt of her mouth so faith that she wouldn't have caught it if not for her eyes, but a smile was a smile.

"Would you like my cup as well?"

He asked it like a question but was already holding his cup out.

She didn't know how to respond to that, so the man simply handed her his cup and took away her empty one. She gulped down the sweet tea in that cup too, and licked her lips.

"Well then, now that you've had a chance to refresh yourself, I believe introductions are in order. First of all, can you understand me?"

She nodded.

"Well then, I'll start. My name is Ozpin, and I am the headmaster of Beacon Academy here in Vale. The ones you fought in the forest were my students, and the reason you were injured was that one of the huntsmen I hired was too eager to carry out his duties. I assure you, it was an accident. We bear no ill will towards you. You are currently in a hospital in Vale and the reason you are here is to ensure that you feel better quicker."

He left a pause then as if he was waiting for something.

"Do you have any questions?"

The huntsmen in the forest had thought she was an enemy and had then fought and subdued her, and once they learned that they were in the wrong, they brought her here to be patched up. She didn't care much about the specifics, since she was now in Vale.

Ozpin cleared his throat, and she realized that he had been waiting for her to reply to him. She shook her head to say no, and then the room grew silent again as the man observed her.

As the silence grew longer, Ozpin asked her a question to break the silence, and it was thankfully blunt.

"What is your name?"

She tried to speak but found her throat producing no noise when she tried to form the sounds she needed.

"Are you mute, by any chance?"

Panic seizes her, and she forces her throat to make noise, and then shape it.

"No."

Her voice was hoarse and barely a whisper, and she had exceptional difficulty in making the o sound, but she still did it, and she was proud of it.

Ozpin smiles at her. "That's good. It seems you have some inexperience with talking, so why don't you try nodding or shaking your head to answer me from now on?"

She nodded.

"Good."

He spent the next few minutes questioning her, and the questions were easy enough to answer. He asks her if she was the one who was killing the Grimm in the woods, and she nods yes. He asks her if she has any family left in any of the kingdoms, and she nods no. He asks her if can count, and she answers yes. He writes out a bunch of numbers and then asks her how many years she spent in the forest. She pointed at the number seven, and Ozpin understood.

Her name has a lot more vowels in it so it takes much more of an effort to say, but she gets it after four tries, which leaves Ozpin smiling.

Finally, after the questions are done, Ozpin goes quiet for a while, and that left her feeling nervous.

"Now, I have one last question I've yet to ask you. Now, you don't need to answer this right away, but I do suggest that you give it some thought."

She waited for the question, thinking it was going to be about something trivial.

"Do you have any plans for the future after you're discharged from the hospital?"

Opzin's question hit her like a brick, and she was still processing it as he got up and headed to the door.

"Well, then, Miss Charlotte, I believe you've had a taxing day. I'll leave you to rest for a bit, and I'll be back tomorrow to help you get discharged and help get you set up somewhere."

Ozpin and the woman left then, and she tried and failed to reel her thoughts in.

In the woods, her desire for revenge had been a blazing inferno that had propelled her through those rough early years, and over the course of her time in the forest, the dread she felt being trapped in the forest had reduced that inferno to a guttering little flicker.

However, over time, she went from living because of a dream to living for the sake of living. As she hit her teenage years, she realized that revenge was a fantasy her child mind had dreamt up to keep her going, because she knew that she had no possible way of leaving the forest. But now she had been rescued, and she needed something to keep her going once more.

Sky had always wanted to become a huntsman. That had been his lifelong dream. Her dream had been to simply continue to be a homesteader like her Dad was, but she knew in her heart that her dream was unattainable now.

She tried to imagine a peaceful life for herself, and it felt like she was lying to herself, because she knew how thin peace was. How could she try and put her past behind her and live a happy life when she knew that monsters wearing human skin and actual monsters were killing people by the dozen?

She made up her mind.

She was going to be a huntress.

She closed her eyes and slept, and she dreamt of crossroads and kind green foxes.