At birth, the pups of the pack are told what they will be. The herbalist takes each one by the scruff to the Undercroft as soon as the mother brings them into the world. There, among the roots of trees hundreds of times a single wolf’s age, rests a disc the color of clouded ice. The pack’s most sacred object, a scrying stone. It yields nothing to the untrained eye, but to those born with the gift? The whole of time is at their claw tips.
Vesta remembers the feel of the cool rock beneath her new hide. How the shafts of light danced across its surface from the gaps in the roots above as the herbalist carved shapes into the air around her. She remembers the way the stone glowed then. Flashing with countless images beneath her paws. Too many for a new pup to process, too much for a new mind to understand. The herbalist had stared into the future twisting around her, and with a grunt he named Vesta’s fate.
”Pack Leader.”
(Fox is 02, 01is Russet/237/F/Anxious, Heaven and Hell is 0)
