When someone feels torn between being one thing or another, it is perhaps best that they can be both.
Mariseld trudged beside her companion, a beast of ancient provenance. She could tell it was dying. Both grief and fear stung as if their fate were shared.
They’d journeyed deep within the forest, where even Spirits tread softly, to beseech any power that might listen. Mariseld knelt, compelled by an old intuition, and closed her eyes to commune with the grove around her. She would not let her hand part from the fading beast.
After many hours, the world vibrated with a primal hum. Mariseld’s hand fell through empty air to the ground. The body was gone, but an elder power had joined the beast’s spirit with hers. Something inside her, once broken or missing, was now changed.
As one, Mariseld leapt up the branches and into the twilight, leaving only her claw marks behind.
