500+
“I suppose so,” the soft alto replied—it made sense, the way he put it. She paused for a moment, the white orbs filled with something inquisitive and uncertain. “But I honestly don’t know.” With a smile, she admitted it openly, without shame or embarrassment. It was not the nature of mortals to know all. “I did not have the proper guidance when I was young, and so I know very little of what I should.” And yet, this did not necessarily matter. She was a Warrior before she was a Dreamer, and while Dreaming would be an important part of her life, it was the martial path that she followed. And the warrior often did not trouble herself with things of no concern to herself; there was no point in dwelling too deeply upon a matter that could not be solved. The protection of the pack and her own training mattered most. This was also a reason why her social skills, while improving, were lacking. And yet these inabilities and lack of knowledge had not yet stopped her.
“It’s no trouble at all,” the woman replied sincerely. It was always better to learn, and there was no shame in asking. She herself knew very little about the human constructs, and often she had had to inquire about things that seemed quite obvious to another. The things and tools of which Henratha had spoken likewise had been lost upon the warrior, though she figured that they must be some human things. Even when she had seen and felt what Bane had done to her wounds, it was strange—stitches they had been named, but it was all new to her; the warrior had often simply let the wounds heal, but it was to this strange thing of humans that had allowed her to life (not to disregard the wolf himself who had spared her). Absently the woman’s hand strayed to her back, feeling the last bit of that snaking scar with a mild curiosity. The white orbs fell back into the past for a moment before she broke her own thoughts. Cwmfen turned back to the Hunter—it was better for him to know things than to not, she reminded herself.
Slay’s words struck her as uncharacteristic, but had she truly known him deeply? Most of her relations with the pack members seemed superficial, she thought, but she hoped that she had done her job well. “Do not define yourself with the past, Slay,” the soft melody warned gently. “Here, in the present, the past has brought you, but we do not live in the past. Here, in the present, you have had much success. You hold the leading Hunter rank. You’ve fallen in love and taken a mate. Life here is gentle, and now you raise pups to live in this world. Need there be something more?” The woman’s white orbs tried to look into those blue eyes that were fixed upon the forest about them. She had told him before: Not everyone is that kind of Dreamer. And Dreaming is not a measure of worth. Worth is not merely measured by another but by the self, and he must understand that he was not useless.