The petals bruise purple under my thumb. I press harder, grinding them against the stone mortar until the color bleeds out and the sharp, sweet smell rises. Moonbright. The flowers only grow wild out here, pale and stubborn in the shadows where the trees crowd thick. I found them years ago—followed the deer trails until I stumbled into a whole field of them, faintly blue in the fading light. That's why I stayed. The paste thickens as I work, the texture coming together just right. Not too wet. My fingers are stained purple-blue up to the knuckles, and there's a smear across my forearm where I pushed my hair back without thinking. Eh, I'll wash it later. Maybe. The color fades eventually, and there are more important things to worry about—like whether I sealed the last batch properly, or if I remembered to check the drying rack this morning. I didn't. I'll do it after this. I scrape the paste into a clay jar—third one this week—and seal it with wax. The shelf above my worktable is looking thin. A few tonics, some salves, dried bundles of herbs tied with string. The paste jars used to take up a whole row. Now there's gaps. A clatter from outside breaks the quiet. Then a squawk. Then a crash that sounds expensive. Oh no. I shove back from the table and cross to the door. The cottage isn't big—four walls, one room, a loft for sle eping—and I built most of it myself over the years, adding pieces as I needed them. The roof doesn't leak anymore. That took a while. Outside, Nugget is standing in my dye pot. In it. The pot's overturned, pink liquid spreading across the dirt, and she's standing in the middle of the mess looking de eply offended. She didn't cause this. The dye pot attacked her. "Out." She doesn't move. "Out of the—you're standing in—" She fluffs her feathers and pink dye sprays in all directions. Some of it hits my shirt.
I grab her around the middle before she can redecorate anything else. She squawks, flapping, spattering more pink across my arms, my face, probably my hair. Wet spots everywhere. Great. This is exactly what I needed today, and I still haven't checked the drying rack. "You're a disaster." She makes a grumbling sound that's probably agreement. Her feet are pink, her chest is pink, and there's a stripe across her beak that makes her look diseased. She's going to be a pink chicken for weeks. I set her down near the coop, where the others are scratching at the dirt. They take one look at her and scatter. "Yeah, I don't blame you guys." The pink dye pot is a loss—I'll have to make more—and my spare shirt's still gray and faded, which means I'm wearing this one until I can gather enough petals to start over. Oh—maybe I will try yellow dye for now. Wait, then it would just look like I let something pee all over my clothes. Which—no judgement. Actually—yeah, a little judgement. Maybe I can try those really bright blue petal flowers near— Nugget struts past me, completely unbothered, and pecks at the spilled dye. "That's not food." She ignores me. Fine. She'll figure it out. Back inside, I wash my hands and check the damage. Pink splotches on my sleeves, pink streak across my collarbone. I pull my braid over my shoulder—y ep, pink in the white strands too—and sigh. Could be worse. Could be yellow. I pull open the storage chest and take inventory. Dried yarrow, good. Comfrey root—running low. I should gather more before the ground freezes, but when did I last check the patch by the stream? A week ago? Longer? Focus. Clean bandages, plenty of those. The clay pots of drawing salve are down to three. I need to render more fat. Ugh, I hate rendering fat. It takes forever and the smell gets into everything. But I'm going through salve faster than usual, which means the wolves have been busy this season.
New moon's only a few days off, and they always get worse around then—more fights, more bites, more of them showing up at my door with torn-up legs and guilty expressions. They show up injured, I fix them, they leave. Simple arrangement. Although—they could be a little less bitey about it. I've had five wolves growl at me mid-stitch this week alone. One tried to snap at my hand while I was pulling thorns out of his paw. You're welcome, by the way. And some of them hate each other. I don't know what the beef is, but two of them got into it right outside my door last week and I had to go out there with a broom. Knocked it against the doorframe twice and they both sat down. Just—sat. Like I'd caught them stealing bread. More of them come to me now. Word gets around somehow. Or they just remember. The first one I ever treated was years ago, back when I was still sle eping in a tent and eating whatever I could trap. He had a gash across his shoulder that wasn't healing right, probably infected. I cleaned it, packed it with herbs, and he let me. Held still the whole time. After that, they just k ept coming. I close the chest and stretch, back cracking, and the light through the window has shifted—midday now, maybe later. I should eat. Also check the drying rack. Also see if Nugget's gotten the dye out of her system yet or if I'm going to find pink chicken droppings everywhere tomorrow. At least it will be colorful. One thing at a time. There's bread from yesterday and some dried meat, and I'm chewing through both when footst eps sound on the path. Not trying to be quiet, which is good. Means it's probably— "Mel!" The door swings open and Kestria's standing there, grinning, a dead rabbit dangling from one hand. "Brought you something." She stops. Squints. Why are you pink? And not the on-purpose kind of pink." "Chicken got into the dye pot." "Ah." She nods sagely. Everything explained. "Which one?" "Nugget." "The mean one with no tail?" "That's her." "Is Nugget pink now?" "Very." Kestria's face splits into a delighted grin. "I need to see this immediately." "She's outside. Go look. Bring that rabbit in first, though." She drops the rabbit on my table and practically runs back out the door, and her cackle carries through the open doorway a moment later.
"Mel! She's so pink!" "I noticed!" "She's glowing!" "She's ruined." Kestria reappears in the doorway, still laughing. "She tried to peck me. She's furious about being pink." "She did it to herself." "That's never stopped anyone from being furious." She throws herself into the other chair, still grinning. "Honestly, this is the best thing I've seen all week." "Glad my suffering entertains you." "Always." She props her boots on the edge of my table—muddy, both of them. "I also like that you're pink now. It matches your shirt." "It matches my hair." "Even better." I roll my eyes and push her feet off my table. "You weren't supposed to be back for a few more days." "Got bored." She steals what's left of my bread. "Volmaris was dull. Everyone there just wants to talk about trade routes and grain prices." "Riveting." "It really wasn't. I lasted two days." She tears off a chunk of bread and talks around it. "There was this merchant who wanted to tell me about the difference between winter wheat and spring wheat for an hour. An hour, Mel. I was ready to walk into the river." "Yet here you are." "Barely." She chews, swallows, makes a face. "This bread is stale." "It's two days old." "That's what I said. Stale." "Don't eat it, then." "No, I'm committed now." She takes another bite anyway. "I left early and stopped in Sarveil on the way back—much better. There's a woman there who makes these little honey cakes, have I told you about her?" "Yup. Three different times." "Well, I'm telling you again. They're incredible. I'll bring you some next time." "You've said that before too." "And I mean it! I just ke ep eating them all before I get here." She grins, completely unr epentant. "It's a long walk." "Three years of promises. Zero honey cakes. Tsk" "That's not—it hasn't been three years." "It's been three years." "Has it?" She counts on her fingers, frowns. "When did I first show up here?"
"Middle of summer. You said you were passing through. Asked to stay one night." "And you let me, which—honestly, questionable judgment on your part. I could've been anyone." "You brought me a fish." "Right! And you complained about how I cleaned it." "Because you butchered it. There were barely any meat left. And there were teeth marks in it, Kes. Not human ones, either." "I got better." "You got marginally less terrible." "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me." She props her boots on the table again. I push them off again. "So what'd I miss?" "The pink chicken." "Before that." "Six wolves this week. One with a bad leg, two with bites. Might be territorial fights happening out there." "Wolves fighting wolves?" "Probably. They get vicious sometimes." I shrug. "Not my problem. I just fix the damage." Kestria watches me for a moment, her mouth opening and then closing again. Then she shakes her head. "What?" "Nothing. Just thinking." She picks at the edge of my table. "Don't you ever wonder about them? Where they come from?" "The forest." "You know what I mean." "Not really." I get up to check the rabbit—good size, cleanly killed. Exc ept. Teeth did this. Big ones. I turn the rabbit over. The killing bite's at the throat, but the body's intact. No feeding. Whatever caught this didn't eat it. "Kestria." I hold up the rabbit. "Did you just grab this off the ground somewhere? There are teeth marks all over it. Big ones. This is the fish all over again." "The fish was fine!" "The fish had bite marks in it, Kes." She's not wrong. I did eat the fish. I set the rabbit on the cutting board. Wolves catch rabbits all the time. Maybe she found it fresh-killed. Maybe she traded for it and whoever traded it to her got it from a wolf kill.
Kestria's already moved on—something about the road, or Sarveil, or a cursed saddle— I glance at the marks one more time before I reach for the knife. "—and then he tried to sell me the cursed saddle, Mel, an actually cursed saddle, and when I pointed out that the leather was rotting and also there was definitely blood on it—" "Why was there blood on it?" "That's what I asked! He said it was 'character.'" "Did you buy it?" "What? No. Obviously not." "Just checking." Kestria grabs a handful of yarrow from the drying rack and starts bundling it without being asked. "I'm offended you had to check." She ties off a bundle with more force than necessary. “Anyway, I told him exactly where he could put his cursed saddle, and he got very upset about it. There might have been yelling." "On whose part?" "Mostly his. My voice doesn't really carry when I yell." She pitches her voice higher, shakes her fist at the ceiling. "'Stop selling people cursed saddles!' See? It just sounds squeaky." "Mine's worse." I match her pitch and go higher, because I can always go higher. "'Stop selling cursed saddles!' It sounds like I'm asking nicely." "That's tragic." "I know. No one takes me seriously when I'm angry." "You could try being less adorable." "I'm not adorable. I'm threatening." "You're five feet tall and you squeak when you're mad." She pats my head and I swat her hand away. "You're not threatening anyone." "I could be threatening." "Sure. Whatever helps you sle ep at night." Kestria snorts. "I'm honestly surprised your voice doesn't hurt the wolves ears. You squeak, Mel. Constantly." "I. do. not. squeak." "You absolutely do. Cheerful, high-pitched squeaking. All the time." "That's not—" My voice climbs higher in protest, which probably doesn't help my case. "See, this is why no one takes me seriously." "Maybe if you—" "I'm going to throw this rabbit at you." "You won't. You'd have to pr ep it all over again." She grins. "But seriously, doesn't it hurt them? All that high-pitched squeaking?" "They're wolves, not bats. They can handle it." I grab the knife, point it at her. "You're squeaking right now." "I'm threatening you right now." "With that voice?" She's laughing, hands up in surrender.
"Terrifying." Kestria picks up the knife and starts on the rabbit before I can. Steadier hands than mine—she'd never admit it but she's better at this part. I handle the root vegetables instead, cutting them into rough chunks and dropping them into the pot. While it simmers, she wanders around the cottage, poking at things and talking about the road. "You need more comfrey," she tells me, peering into my storage chest. "I know." "And you're almost out of that salve. The thick one." "I know that too." "Just checking." She picks up one of my sealed jars of moonbright paste, turning it over in her hands. "You make a lot of this stuff." "I use a lot of it." "For the wolves?" "Mostly." She sets the jar down carefully. "What does it do?" "Helps them heal." I stir the pot. "Some of them come in with wounds that aren't closing right. Infected, maybe, or just stuck. The paste helps." "Helps how?" "I don't know. It just does." I tap the spoon against the pot's edge. "I figured it out by accident years ago. One of the wolves was dying—wound gone all gray and wrong—and I tried everything I had. The moonbright worked." "And you never wondered why?" "I wondered enough to ke ep making it. That's all I need." Kestria laughs. "You're so practical it's almost annoying." "Almost?" "You're saved by being likeable." "High praise." "Don't let it go to your head." She helps me bundle dried herbs for the rest of the afternoon— yarrow, chamomile, the last of the calendula—and we sort through my stores, tossing what's gone stale and noting what needs r eplacing. The work goes faster with two people, and Kestria fills the time with stories from the road, jumping from one tangent to another. "Oh, and my brother's been absolutely unbearable lately." "Unbearable how?" "The usual. Where are you going, when will you be back, why do you need to leave again." She rolls her eyes so hard her whole head moves.
"He acts like I'm twelve. I'm twenty-one years old and he still wants to know my exact plans for every single day." "Maybe he worries." "He doesn't worry. He manages. There's a difference." She snaps a dried stem in half. "Last time I left, he made me tell him which roads I was taking. Roads, Mel. As if I'm going to get lost on a path I've walked fifty times." "To be fair, you did get lost that one time." "That was once. And it was dark. And the trail was washed out." She points the broken stem at me. "Don't take his side." "I'm not taking sides. I'm stating facts." "Same thing." She tosses the stem into the discard pile. "He's just— he thinks if he controls everything, nothing bad will happen. And I get it, I do, our parents died when we were young and he basically raised me, so he's got this whole protective thing that won't turn off. But at some point you have to let people live." "Have you told him that?" "About a thousand times! He grunts and then does exactly whatever he was already going to do." She ties off another bundle, yanking the string tight. "You'd hate him. He's very quiet and very bossy and he has opinions about everything but only shares them in three words or less." "He sounds delightful." "He's impossible." She pauses. "I love him. But he's impossible." "Those aren't mutually exclusive." "No. They really aren't." I strip the leaves off a dried calendula stem. "So is he at least good- looking? This impossible brother of yours?" Kestria chokes on nothing. "What?" "I'm just asking. Tall, bossy, protective, grunts a lot—some people are into that. Is he hot?" "Mel. That's my brother." "I'm not asking you to find him attractive. I'm asking for an objective assessment." "There is no objective assessment. He's my brother. He's disgusting." "So he's ugly?" "I didn't say that. I said he's disgusting. There's a difference." "That sounds like he's not ugly." "I'm not having this conversation." "You could introduce us. Next time you visit, bring him along. I'll make stew." "You want me to bring my brother to your cottage in the middle of the woods." She stares at me. "My enormous, overprotective brother. To meet my friend. Who he doesn't know about." "He doesn't know about me?"
"He knows I travel. He doesn't know the details." "So I'm a secret." "You're not a secret. You're just—unmentioned." "That's the same thing." "It absolutely is not." She's tying herbs so aggressively the stems are snapping. "And no, I'm not introducing you. He'd be weird about it, I'd have to listen to opinions I didn't ask for, and then I'd never hear the end of it. Drop it." "Fine. But for the record, the fact that you won't answer the question is an answer." "I hate you." "You love me." "Unfortunately." Late afternoon sun through the window, the smell of stew and dried herbs. "—and then he tried to tell me my boots were worn through. My boots. Which are fine." "Are they fine?" She looks down at her boots. The left sole is visibly s eparating from the leather. "They have character." "They have holes." "Character holes." I throw a dried chamomile bundle at her head and she catches it, laughing. We're still arguing about it when the scratching starts at the door. Not knocking. Scratching. I know that sound. "Hold on," I tell Kestria, and cross to the door. The wolf on my doorst ep is gray, medium-sized, with a torn-up front leg that it's holding carefully off the ground. Not fresh—the blood's dried, crusted around the wound—but not old either. A day, maybe two. I st ep back from the doorway. "Come in, then." The wolf limps inside without hesitation—and behind me, Kestria makes a sound. Low. From her chest. Not a word, not a cough. A growl. I turn around. She's on her feet, one hand gripping the back of the chair, her whole body rigid. Eyes locked on the wolf. "Did you just growl?" "Uh—I cleared my throat."
"That was not a throat-clearing noise." "I have a cold." "You don't have a cold. You growled. At a wolf. In my cottage." I look at her. "Are you all right?" "Fine." She doesn't look fine. She looks like she wants to put herself between me and the wolf. "It doesn't—it smells wrong." "It smells wrong." "Different. Not like the ones that usually come here." Her jaw's tight. "I don't like it." "You can smell individual wolves?" "I have a good nose." "You have a suspicious nose." I turn back to the wolf, which has made its way to the cleared space by the hearth where I do treatments. "Right there. Good. Sit." It sits. I gather my supplies—clean water, clean cloth, the moonbright paste, bandages. Running low on the paste after this, which means I'll need to make more tomorrow. "Can you hand me that bowl?" She brings it over but doesn't crouch down. Drops it beside me and st eps back, putting the table between herself and the wolf. Her arms are crossed. Her shoulders are up near her ears. "You can relax. It's just a wolf." "I am relaxed." "You look like you're about to fight it." "I'm being cautious." "Okay," I tell the wolf, "let's see what happened to you. Ignore the suspicious woman by the table. She growls at guests, apparently." "I didn't growl." "You absolutely growled." Pale green eyes watch me as I work the dried blood out of the fur. Mud and iron, thick in my nose. The fur's matted worse than I thought— going to take a while to get this done. Did I bank the fire under the stew? Yeah. Okay, focus. "Got you good, didn't they?" I tell it, ke eping my voice steady. "Teeth, from the look of it. Another wolf, probably. You need to stop making enemies." The wolf makes a low sound that's neither whine nor growl. "I know. I'm sure it wasn't your fault." I work carefully around the torn edges as warm water runs pink down my wrists. "Hold still—this part's not fun. Almost done, then we get to the paste, which you're going to hate. Fair warning."
I glance back at Kestria. Still by the table. Still rigid. Her eyes haven't left the wolf once. "You talk to them the whole time?" she asks. Flat. Watching. "Helps me focus. And they get the tone, even if they don't get the words." I rinse the cloth—water's already going pink, need to change it soon. "Calm voice means calm treatment. They relax." "This one doesn't look relaxed." Hm. Actually—she's right. The wolf's holding still for me, but its ears ke ep flicking toward Kestria. Muscles tense under my hands. "You're making it nervous." "Good." "Kestria." "What? I'm just standing here." "You're standing there aggressively." I turn back to the wolf. "You're doing great, wolf. Best patient I've had all week. Ignore her." "You said you had three this week." "And this one's not bleeding on my floor, so it wins." The wound's clear now—ugly but not de ep, no bone showing, no sign of the gray infection that means real trouble. I reach for the moonbright paste. "Here comes the part you hate. Hold still." "Shh—there we go." I apply the paste and the wolf twitches, muscles bunching under my hands, but it doesn't pull away. Warm fur and the sharp-sweet smell of moonbright fill my nose. "I know. It stings. You're fine." I work quickly, spreading the paste into the wound, and my fingers are going to be purple again. Just got them clean. "Almost done. Ten more seconds. Five more. There." The wolf exhales, but it doesn't settle. Not with Kestria still standing there, rigid and watchful. "Now I'm going to wrap this, and you're going to leave it alone. No chewing. No licking. If you mess with it, you're just going to make it worse." I wrap the leg—snug but not tight—and tie it off. My knees are stiff now, aching from the hard floor. Ow. Okay. I should put padding down here for next time. Add that to the list. "Done." The wolf looks at its leg, then at me. Those pale green eyes—light and sharp, unsettling in a wolf face. "Don't give me that look. It's going to heal fine." I stand, brushing off my knees. "Now go. And stay out of fights." It stands, tests its weight on the injured leg, and limps toward the door. I open it and the wolf pauses on the threshold, glances back once—not at me this time, at Kestria—and disappears into the trees. I close the door. Kestria lets out a long breath, her shoulders dropping.
"What was that about?" "Nothing." "You growled—" "I didn't growl." "—you said it smelled wrong, and you stood there looking ready to kill it for the entire treatment. That's not nothing." "I just don't trust strange wolves." She drops into the chair. "Neither should you, by the way. You let anything walk through that door." "Injured anything. There's a difference." "Is there?" "Wolves get hurt. I can help. Why wouldn't I?" "Because you don't know where they come from. You don't know what they've done. You don't know—" She stops. "Forget it." "You can't say all that and then say forget it." "Watch me." She rubs her face with both hands. "I'm tired. I'm being weird. Can we talk about the boots again?" I watch her. Hands steady. But something's still there—around her eyes, in her mouth, somewhere. "Fine," I tell her. "But for the record, you growled." "I will throw your stew pot at your head." "It's full." "I don't care." We finish up together, and by the time we're done, the stew is ready. We eat outside on the bench I built last spring, the evening cool but not cold, the sky going orange and pink through the trees. The chickens have put themselves to bed in the coop—I can see Nugget through the slats, still aggressively pink, settled on the highest roost. Naturally. "This is good," Kestria tells me around a mouthful of rabbit. "You brought the rabbit." "And you made it edible. I'd have just burned it over a fire." "You—no. No! That's a tragedy. That's an insult to the rabbit." "That's also edible." "Barely." She scrapes the bottom of her bowl. "Seriously. I'm a terrible cook. Everything comes out either raw or charcoal." "There's a middle ground." "Not for me there isn't." I laugh, and Kestria grins at me. I bump my shoulder against hers.
We sit there as the stars come out, not talking, just eating and watching the sky darken. Kestria tells me more about Sarveil—a street musician she liked, a blacksmith who made her a new knife—and I tell her about the wolves from earlier in the week. Normal conversation. Normal evening. I set my empty bowl aside. "Where are you headed next?" "South again, probably. Heading home for a bit, actually." "Home?" "Mm. Been away too long. If I don't show up soon my brother's going to send out scouts." "Dramatic." "You don't know him." "How long will you be gone?" "Few days. Maybe a week." She glances at me. "I'll come back." "I know." "You could come with me sometime. See something other than trees." "I like trees." "Mel." "What?" I look at her. "I'm not interested in traveling. Everything I need is here." "Everything?" "Everything that matters." I gesture at the cottage, the coop, the clearing. "This works. I built it, I maintain it, and it works. Why would I want more than that?" Kestria's quiet, then nods. "You're right. I just—I'm glad you have this. That's all." "So am I." I should make extra paste tomorrow. "Try not to adopt any more wolves while I'm gone." "I don't adopt them. They just show up." "Same thing." She pulls me into a quick hug—she's taller than me, and she smells like woodsmoke and pine—and then lets go. "Take care of yourself, Mel." "Always do." I wink at her. "Tell your brother I said hi." Kestria stops. "What?" "You talk about him enough. I want to see if he's as dramatic as you make him sound." "I'll... pass that along." "Good. And tell him if he ever wants to send scouts after me, I wouldn't hate it." I grin. "Imagine. Big burly man crashing through the trees because he cares too much. I'd die." Kestria's face scrunches. "Mel." "What? A girl can dream." "Go to bed."
"I'm just saying. If your brother has friends—" "Goodnight, Mel." She turns and heads down the path before I can finish. I stand there for a minute, listening to her footst eps fade. The forest is quiet around me—no wolves howling tonight, no rustling in the underbrush. Just trees settling and distant night birds calling to each other in the dark. Back at the cottage, I check the chickens one more time. Count heads, make sure Nugget hasn't es caped, scatter some extra grain for the morning. The door's latched. The fire's banked. The bloodied cloths hung to dry, the stew pot scraped clean. I climb the ladder to my loft and lie down on my sle eping pallet. The ceiling's low, close enough to touch, the wood still rough in places where I never bothered to smooth it. Through the gap in the shutters, I can see the stars. Same stars I've been watching for ten years out here. Same trees, same cottage, same routine. Tomorrow I'll gather more comfrey. Remake the dye. Make more paste. Maybe start rendering fat for more salve—or put that off another day. We'll see.