This mind is still and calm, not pulled urgently by the call of the moons, not battered by the storm of emotions surrounding them. Warm and content, tucked into her shell, unaware of the world outside.

He wants to burrow into this small calm place and hide there from the big complicated world, but at the same time and much more strongly, he needs to answer the call and escape from his shell. He can feel the light just barely touching his scales, dimmed by its passage through the shell, and he needs to tear that shell away so he can bathe in it. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch, with clumsy claws whose shape he only barely understands.

The clashing feelings are getting stronger, faster than he can claw his way out of his shell. An unseen balance begins to tip. Strange images pour into his mind, of scales torn and bloody, claws swift and sharp.

He doesn't fully understand what the images mean, but he knows that they're bad and scary, and that coming out of his shell faster will make the bad scary thing go away. He pushes harder, determined to win, determined to escape, determined to protect the one who feels so protective of him.

Under his relentless assault, the shell begins to crack. A sliver of moonlight peeks through.

He feels it touch his back claws and kicks harder, his determination renewed. The bad images fade, and the two minds cease their conflict; the protective one shimmers with excitement, and the resentful one is grudgingly curious.

In the exultant rush of his first victory, he tries to reach out to the small quiet mind right next to him, tries to share his pride and offer her encouragement, call her out of her shell like the moons are calling him; but strangely, no matter how he wiggles his clumsy body in an effort to press closer, he can't find any echo of his own thoughts in hers.

Her heart beats on, quiet and steady, untouched by mind or moon.

Another flare of danger distracts him. He kicks and claws at his shell, reaching with all his might for the tantalizing feeling of the moonlight on the other side, the feeling that says he is welcome, he is wanted, he is going to be glorious. He flails his wings and stretches his talons and snaps his jaws and—and—

His shell shatters, and the moonlight pours in, eager rays wrapping him up in the silver mantle he was made for. Every scale blazes where the light touches it. The shards of his shell reflect the light into the shadows of his wings and belly, surrounding him with its soft, welcoming glow.

He opens his wings and rolls around, bathing every scale in the light. His eyes blink open for the first time and he looks up and sees three huge silver eyes staring back down at him, and understands that these are the moons whose light called to him, and he reaches up with his tiny talons and tries to grab them out of the sky, tries to devour their beauty and brilliance so it will never stop shining on him. But his reach is not long enough, his claws not strong enough; the moons are beyond his power.

When he finally lowers his eyes from the sky, the first thing he sees is the nest: round and warm, carved into rock and lined with black fur. Beyond its edge, the world is a maze of black and silver stripes, stone tangled with shadows.

His sister's egg rests close by in the nest, its black shell nearly invisible against the black fur, undisturbed by his emergence.

Two huge shapes loom overhead. One, dark and flecked with silver, blends in against the starry night sky; but he can tell she's there by the thoughts in her head, by the echo in his own mind of what she sees when she looks at him. It's the protective one, and she holds out her talons with a beaming smile, her heart overflowing with love for the tiny creature she made.

"Darkstalker," she says. "Hello, darling." Meaningless noise by themselves, the words are tangled with her thoughts in a way that makes it nearly possible to understand them.

"Darkstalker?" the other shape, looming pale and white and awful in the reflected moonlight speaks next. "You must be joking. That's the creepiest name I've ever heard." His words are mixed with thoughts in a way that makes them just as nearly understandable as the protective one, but the thoughts of the resentful one are laced through with vile pain and regret, in a way that makes them much less easy to experience. 

"It is not," the dark-scaled dragon snaps. "The darkness is his prey. He chases back the dark, like a hero." Her thoughts are full of images of her beloved new dragonet pouncing on shadows, defending his tribe and his loved ones.

Darkstalker doesn't understand most of the details, but he understands enough to tumble awkwardly into his mother's arms, curling himself up in the warmth of her touch and her love.

"Sounds more like he creeps through the dark. Like a stalker." His thoughts are of something terrible lurking in shadows, never seen, only felt, a prickling up the tail, watching and waiting for some awful unknown purpose. 

He shivers, hiding in his mother's arms from the specter of his father's opinions.

She cuddles him protectively. "Stop being horrible. It's not up to you. Among the NightWings, mothers choose their dragonets' names."

The thoughts that accompany these words are harder for her dragonet to understand, being mostly about her complicated relationship with her own mother; what comes through the most clearly is a sense of belonging, being a part of the group of black-scaled dragons who live in this shadowy tangle of canyons.

"Well among the IceWings, the dragon with the highest rank in the family chooses the dragonets' names and the queen must approve them."

His thoughts are of a similarly complex concept, a memory of rules and strictures that are both a reviled cage and sense of familiarity, now shattered and broken, despised and missed. The images that accompany it are more pale white scales, violence and blood, fierceness and regret. 

"And of course you think your 'rank' is higher than mine." Her mind seethes with resentment of his sense of superiority. "But we're not among the IceWings. My dragonets will never set foot in your frozen wasteland. We are here, whether you like it or not, and he is my son, and his name is Darkstalker."

She cradles her dragonet close against her chest, where he can hear her heartbeat through her scales.

The pale shape stares him, his eyes like shards of ice studying every scale, his gaze full of cold and heavy resentment. 

"He looks every inch a NightWing," he growls finally, his words and thoughts distancing him from the tiny new dragonet. "Not a shred of me in him at all." 

There is distrust in the thoughts around those words, suspicion and anger, resentment and pain. 

Darkstalker burrows deeper in his mother's arms. Under the shining moons he felt amazing and powerful, but under his father's eyes he feels small and scared.

His mother growls softly, but doesn't answer her mate's unspoken accusation.

"Fine," he says at last. "You can have your sinister little Darkstalker. But I want to name the other one." More distancing thoughts, but also thoughts of the other egg, black and untouched by silver. She could have him, but whatever hatched out of that egg would be his. 

She glances back and forth between the ice-pale dragon and the night-black egg, considering. Moon-touched eggs are supposed to be silver, like Darkstalker's; does that black shell, dark and ordinary, signal a late hatching or no hatching at all? Is there a second dragonet to be named, or is this shell as empty as a moonless night?

He knows the answer to that question, but he doesn't know how to tell her. He has only the vaguest sense of how this business with making sounds about your thoughts might work.

Maybe, though...

His claws tingle, and his mind sees distant things again, images of futures he barely understands. In one future, he calls his sister out of her egg, and she spreads her beautiful wings in the moonlight, and they are equal in its power. She could hear his thoughts as he hears hers; she could see these same glimpses of what may come.

In the other future, he waits, and does nothing. His sister hatches late, and still beautiful. But she grows up like she is now, moonless, unable to see into the future or into other dragons' minds.

And in between those two, as he hesitates, he sees a smaller, subtler change, turning on a smaller, subtler choice...

Foeslayer, too, is hesitating.

She's not, really, willing to let Arctic name an entire definitely living dragonet. It's only the chance that the egg might be stillborn that lets her consider it. The detachment of grieving a lost egg is all tangled up with the detachment of letting her mate name their child, so that it feels like giving up the name is giving up the dragonet. Arctic clearly wants it, though, and she can tell he's going to be a rhinoceros nostril about it if she doesn't cave, and it's not as though he doesn't have any part of a point, wanting to compromise between their traditions as their union has compromised between their tribes. (Even though the IceWings are a bunch of frightful snobs who think about nothing but snow and social status all day, and the NightWings, while by no means perfect, clearly have a much better thing going.)

"All right," she says, heavily, grudgingly. "If that egg hatches, you can name the dragonet inside."

He glimpses that elusive future only as it slips away. His sister could have shared in his mother's love, as easily and freely as he will; but now there's a barrier between them, something he doesn't understand, a shadow over their future.

It's that, more than anything, that decides him. Though part of him fears the shape of the future with his sister moon-blessed by his side, though part of him wants to guard his power jealously and keep it all to himself, in this moment he's not thinking about that; he's grasping desperately after a vanished opportunity, trying to fix his mistake even though he can see it's too late. He reaches for his sister's egg, and does the thing he saw himself doing, and sees silver bloom where his talons touch her shell.

The mind inside stirs, sleepy and uncertain. Suddenly everything is so much louder. Where has her calm stillness gone? Can't she go back to sleep?

No no come out!! Come out in the moonlight, be beautiful, be loved!! He nuzzles his snout against his sister's egg, presses the side of his face to it, tries to listen for her heartbeat. He looks up at the moons and remembers for her how good it was to greet them. His thoughts are full of wordless encouragement and anxious love.

Oh. Okay then.

She stretches and shifts. Her weak talons scratch against her egg's tough shell. It'll take a little while, but she doesn't mind that. She's quietly determined to come out into the moonlight.

Arctic watches the tiny dragonet reach for his sibling's egg, and silver spreads across the edge from where he touches. Could he have...

No, that's impossible. He's far too young, he couldn't possibly have. Arctic dismisses the foolish thought and watches as his dragonet starts to scratch against the shell of their egg. "Well, it looks like it's going to," he says, with an air of vindicated superiority. "Perhaps this one will have more of me in them than yours." 

She wonders, tiredly, not for the first time, where it all went wrong. When did they start being the kind of people who divide up their children into mine and yours? When did they forget how to speak to each other without arguing? Was it ever really worth it, to love this impossible stranger, with his chilly IceWing superiority?

But she looks down at her son, earnestly pressing his talons against his sister's egg; and she flicks her ear to feel the weight of the earring there, the magical protection that Arctic defied his tribe's traditions to give her; and she thinks that, yes, there's something here worth having. Arctic does love her, and she does love him, and they made at least one beautiful child together, and maybe the second one will hatch too, and... and surely she won't always feel this way about her other child, stung by defeat, marred by a misplaced grief, surely once the dragonet hatches it'll all be fine...

Darkstalker claws at the fur-lined floor of the nest in frustration, growing a tiny dragonet growl. He can tell that his mother is wishing for that lost future too, even though she never saw it. He doesn't know how to give it to her. He wishes with all his heart that he could.

In her egg, the second dragonet steadily scratches. She can feel the patient moons waiting; she knows they'll be here for her when she gets out.

Her brother is so sad, though. She's having trouble understanding why. Something about their parents, but she can't understand their parents as well as he does, with his headstart on mindreading. Something about the way her mother is looking at her egg...

She wears away at the shell with slow, methodical scrapes of her talons. There's a weak spot just there; she sees in the future how she'll be able to feel it, after she's worn at it enough. First the creak, and then the crack, and then the breaking free. That's how it's going to go.

It's amazing how patient she is. Darkstalker couldn't wait to get out of his egg! And even now that she can feel the moons—he can hear her feeling them!—she's still so different.

He bumps his nose against her eggshell and makes an affectionate warbling noise.

(For just a moment, even without the power to read minds, Foeslayer sees her daughter through her son's eyes, and understands what it would be like to feel unconditional love for the mystery locked inside that mysteriously colour-changing egg.)

The weak spot creaks. See? Everything is going to be fine.

Darkstalker does not know how to articulate complex ideas even inside his own head, but he does know how to pat his sister's egg encouragingly. Pat pat. Soon she'll be out here and pretty and full of moonlight. Soon. Soon? Soon, right? Will it be sooner if he bonks his head against the shell?

All right, that's enough of that. You're not supposed to bother a hatching egg too much. Foeslayer scoops him away from it and watches, trying to recapture the expectant joy of watching her son hatch, trying not to resent her mate for badgering her into letting him name this one.

He squawks indignantly—he was helping!—but then settles. At least mostly. His mother's arms are going to end up full of impatient wiggles before this hatching is through.

She makes steady progress over the next few minutes until, at last, the shell breaks open and the light comes pouring in.

She's every bit as beautiful as her brother expected. Dark scales on most of her body, but ice-pale wings flecked with black, the inverse of a NightWing's black wings flecked with starry white. When she raises them to the moons she nearly seems to glow, like a little moon herself.

She's like no dragonet he's ever seen, though of course that's to be expected, there's never been a child of IceWings and NightWings before, no queen would ever have allowed such a thing. 

Strange though she is, she's beautiful, shining in the moonlight. "Whiteout," he decides, reaching out his talons to his daughter the same way Foeslayer did with her son. "A fitting name for such a pretty dragon." His tone makes it clear that he will brook no argument. She did agree, after all, and he watches his daughter stretch her wings, smiling at how lovely she looks in the light of the moons. 

Foeslayer grits her teeth and lets go of her son, half because she can tell he wants to greet his sister, half because she's afraid if she keeps hold of him she'll squeeze him too hard.

Whiteout doesn't notice her father reaching for her, too busy basking in moonlight. It makes such pretty pictures in her mind, and such pretty sparkles on her scales!

Darkstalker intends to wrap his arms around his sister the way his mother wrapped her arms around him, warm and comforting and full of love. But he is not very good at moving his body yet, so what actually happens is that he tackles her to the floor of the nest.

She meeps with surprise, then giggles. Darkstalker's love is big and strong and clumsy just like he is! What a pretty shape for the world to be!

"Disruptive little one, isn't he?" Arctic says, both mildly amused at the sight and mildly frustrated that his daughter didn't come to him the way she should have.  There will be time for that later, he supposes. Plenty of time for him to dote on his loving daughter and watch her love him in return. "I'm sure he'll be more polite as he gets older."

"I like him. He's fierce." She shouldn't start a fight—who is she kidding, saying anything at all was starting a fight. Existing where Arctic can see her is starting a fight.

It's easier to not fight, though, when she's distracted by how much she loves her dragonet. Her dragonets. She has two. She has two and she loves them both.

Whiteout climbs on top of her brother and flops her wings out as wide as they will go. See, it's like she's covering him in moonlight!

That's very pretty and sweet and also she is standing on his face. He pushes her off.

She curls up in the nest next to him, entirely content.

Arctic grunts an acknowledgment but says nothing else in response. He, too is distracted with the adorable dragons in front of him, watching his daughter at play with her brother, feeling a wisp of joy and love in his heart. It's been difficult, being in this far too warm and unstructured land, but there are joys to be found, and this is certainly one of them. 

All right. They can just stay here, for a little while, and let their dragonets play. She hunches down, refolding her wings in a futile effort to prevent the wind from sneaking in under them and trying to lift them off her back.

"...we should get them home before the storm hits," she says, hoping it won't be heard as an attack.

Arctic, still enamored with the sight in front of him, looks up suddenly at Foeslayer's words. He looks at the sky, feels the wind, and sighs. "You're right," he tells her, and reaches down to scoop up his daughter to carry her home. She's very cute and pretty, even with all the dark scales, and he supposes Darkstalker isn't all that bad either, despite the disconcerting name. "They're very good, aren't they," he tells her, cradling Whiteout into his arms. "We made good dragonets, didn't we."

She scoops up Darkstalker and snugs him up against her chest, safe and warm.

"Yes," she says, loosening her wings and stepping to the edge of the nest. "We really, really did."

Her wings snap open to catch the wind as she launches herself into the air. The jagged landscape of stone and shadow wheels and spins below her, comfortable and familiar, a map written on her heart. She follows it to the cliffside cave she shares with Arctic, trying to keep her mind focused on love and happiness and cute dragonets and away from her daughter's strange IceWing name. It'll probably be fine, right? People tolerate Arctic, mostly. They can tolerate Whiteout too. And with those icy wings, it's not like she has any choice besides standing out dramatically.

Darkstalker catches hints of his mother's concerns, but mostly he's thinking about how flying is the best prettiest coolest thing and he wants to do it all the time always.

Arctic follows close behind through the dark and unfamiliar land, cradling his beautiful snow-winged dragonet in his arms. This place is still strange to him and even stranger in the triple moonlight, and he wishes he did not need to follow so close to be able to find his way. But they should be back at the cave soon, back at his new home, with new dragonets in tow, and having Whiteout in his arms makes it difficult to feel quite so frustrated at being somewhere that still feels so unsettling.  

What a lovely vantage from which to see this new and exciting world, full of light and shadow! She wraps her small arms around her father's forearm and leans her head against his pleasantly chilly scales and watches the world scroll by.

Of course this fragile peace doesn't last. It never does.

She tries, she tries very hard, not to snipe and snarl and snap in front of the children. And she can feel herself failing, but knowing how close she is to disaster never saves her; she yells at her mate just the same, and Darkstalker hides away in his bed, and Whiteout gets quieter and quieter until it's like she disappears, and sometimes, shamefully, she's glad her children are making themselves scarce because it means she feels less guilty for getting into it with Arctic. If only he weren't so aloof. If only he weren't so infuriating. If only he weren't such an IceWing.

But she does love her mate, and she does love her beautiful dragonets.There's times when it's hard to remind herself of that, even with Darkstalker who she loves as easily as breathing, times when it feels like she can't breathe through the stress and fury wrapped around her like a tangle of rope. But even so, she loves them all, and though her life may be painful and frustrating and full of strife and trouble, it's the life she built for herself with the mate she chose (shut up, Mother), and she's mostly more or less doing okay at it, she thinks, probably. Probably other families are just as bad. Hers certainly was. At least, at least, she loves her children for their own sake and not for how well they meet her lofty expectations and not for how useful they are as pawns in her schemes, Mother.

Darkstalker loves his mother and tolerates his father. In the first few months after his hatching it looks like he's going to grow up into a rambunctious child, always knocking over furniture and getting into scrapes; but he learns to move slower and hold himself more carefully, because nothing sets his father off faster than a misplaced tail sweeping someone's dinner off the table.

So much of his life is built around avoiding his father's wrath, or minimizing the inevitable spats between his parents. He learns to curb his instinct to come to his mother's defense, because Arctic always digs in deeper when he feels attacked from both sides, even when he's wrong and being stupid and should know it. He learns to move carefully and gracefully and make just enough noise that his father doesn't growl at him for 'stalking'. He learns to be very gentle with his sister, far more than has ever actually mattered to Whiteout herself, because if Father catches them roughhousing he'll assume Darkstalker is bullying her and that never ends well. He learns to always be listening to his parents' thoughts, always watching the short-term future, because whenever he lets himself get careless, sooner or later he's always made to regret it. At least when he's sufficiently vigilant, he can head off most of the little stuff.

Whiteout, by contrast, is a calm little creature, and mostly doesn't pay much attention to what's inside other people's heads. Where Darkstalker immerses himself in other people's minds to stay one step ahead of them, Whiteout prefers to get out of their way and find something else to do. Like watch a beetle crawl across the floor, or make pretty pictures out of the food on her plate.

She takes to reading a little faster than he does, but to writing much slower, because if you put an inkpot in reach of her claws she cannot stop herself from drawing with it. She's also much slower to talk, because talking requires having something to say and then going to the effort of saying it, and why would she bother when Darkstalker can hear everything she thinks in his presence? Her father hates hearing her thoughts translated through her brother, though, so she does eventually apply herself to the discipline of speech, just so Arctic won't be so upset. Her father being upset seems to be an inevitable fact of the universe, but that doesn't mean she likes it.

Arctic is... frustrated. Always, always frustrated. Even after years, the NightWing lands still don't feel like his home. His mate coddles their dragonets, letting them roughhouse and play without instilling in them any sense of discipline or honor. It is the way of this tribe, but he still cannot help but look at what little they have accomplished and wonder what circle they would be in now, even ignoring the loss of his own status. Fifth? Sixth? Whiteout especially, his beautiful daughter, is especially lacking, drawing and musing instead of doing. He still loves her, but he deeply wishes she were more normal. Though normal is in short supply in this home, what with Darkstalker rifling around in his thoughts and saying words for his sister, keeping her from learning to speak. Foeslayer thinks of his "talents" as a gift, not a curse, but he still has trouble looking at his son knowing that he's listening in. He still loves them all, but sometimes he wonders what things would have been like if he hadn't done what he did. 

Clearsight is in the library.

She spends nearly all of her time in the library. Her parents often joke that they should have let her egg hatch there instead of on the lunar hatching peak, sometimes in a more admonishing tone than an amused one as they tried to coax her to do anything else. Of course, if they had she wouldn't have been given the gift of prophecy by the full moon, and she would have had no reason to spend all her time in the library in the first place, and would have had a blissful unaware ten or fifteen years of life before everything ended in blood and darkness. 

At least, she thinks that's what would have happened. She cannot see the past, only the future. In the ones where she successfully runs away everything is worse, (she thinks, so many of those end in a fog that she thinks mean her death), but she knows from looking just by existing she's changing things. The ones she can see more clearly, the ones where she stays and avoids him all end in horror. He already knows about her, and will tear things apart to find her, or feel feel sorrow at the loss of a future that she would be keeping from him. How would things be different if they never even had a chance to meet? Would that change things? 

She cannot know, can never know, and there's little point in dwelling on such things. She has to work with what she's got. She knows of him, and he knows of her, and she has to navigate the path to the right futures. 

But doing so was so very difficult. The librarian had given her a study room of her own, most likely to keep her away from the other patrons rather than out of altruism or encouragement. Half-filed scrolls were unrolled on the five tables arrayed around her, partly complete maps of timelines that she struggled to fill in with more and more details even as they branched and twisted and became impossible to pin down. Step one: meet him, step two: chaos along every potential timeline. 

There is a heavy sigh from the doorway.

"Hello, Father," she says, without looking up. Her attention is elsewhere. This note, when did she write this? 

The SeaWing brings death. The SeaWing brings salvation. Don't let him come. He must come, or all is lost.

Uggggh. Clearsight sighs and thumps her tail on the stone floor in frustration. 

"Clearsight," he tells her, "you are too young to worry this much."

"I should worry more," she says, looking at the note again. Something awful was going to happen with the SeaWings not too long from now, something involving so much death. The SeaWing lands are so far away, too far for her to know the details, but still she knows. She wishes she could do something, warn someone, but there's no path she can see where anyone believes her, and still so many SeaWings die. She can't do anything about them, she has to focus on what she can change. "The whole point of being able to see the future is so I can fix it. I just need to find all the details, map out all the paths, figure out the right way forward."

"All the paths?" he echoes. "Every future that spirals out of every choice you and every other dragon make for the rest of your life? Do you hear what you're saying? That's impossible, dearest, that way lies madness."

"No," she says, still thinking about the SeaWings, trying once again to find one future where she saves them. "I've thought about that one. Madness doesn't help, I've checked." That and so many others. Anything she does to try and avoid him will just make things worse.  

"This gift is not supposed to consume your entire life," he tells her, stepping over the scrolls on the floor and skirting around puddle of ink until he can put a wing between her and the table. She looks up at him, and he continues. "Listen," he says, as gently as he can manage. "I know your power is the strongest the NightWings have had in generations. I know it feels like you see everything ahead of you."

"It's not that simple," she tells him. "I don't see my path laid out straight in front of me, it's not 'this is your life, this is how it will go.' It's every possible thing that could happen to me, or the tribe, and all of it depending on what I do. But there are so many details, so many choices, and it's just so hard to keep track, and the further forward I look... it just gets so random and confusing."

"I understand," he sympathizes, wrapping his wings around his daughter. "But Clearsight, even if you could see everything, that doesn't mean you can control everything. Or anything. Things will happen. Other dragons will change your path, and you won't be able to stop them."

That is far more true than he knows. Darkstalker's face flashes in her mind, and with it a torrent of futures, joy and sadness, love and despair, pain and horror, so mixed together that she can hardly tell one thread from another. "I wish, I wish I could just go away." She can't of course, no matter how much she wishes for a future where only she decides her fate, far away from any other influence. That way lies so much blood and awfulness, and she couldn't do that to her tribe.

A vision of a silver and gold crown, twisted into thorny spikes, flashes in her mind. Timeline three again. She wriggles herself out of her father's grasp, and leans over to make a note. 

"What are you so afraid of, dearest?" he asks, taking her claws in his own to keep them still.

The blue ink smudges on his talons like blood, the blue blood of IceWings that she's seen in so very many futures. She holds back a shudder. "I shouldn't tell you," she tells him. "I'm sorry." If she tells him his name too early, he dies. She still can't see how, or why, one of a thousand details she can't pin down, but even not knowing how, she can still prevent it. Something she can actually do, here and now, save the life of her sweet and ordinary father, whom she loves dearly. That, at least, is hers.

He sighs. "Clearsight, your mother and I have been talking about this. We think it's time for you to go to school. Dragonets are supposed to start when they're one, and you're nearly two and a half."

"No, wait!" she says, her concern and fear present in her voice. "I don't have everything figured out yet. School is when everything changes, when I can't control things properly." She points at the scroll on table two. "Look what happens when I go to school," she says, with a note of panic in her voice. "There's just too much complexity. If I'm put in a different art group, things change, if make friends with this dragon instead of that one it opens up a whole mess of new possibilities. If I get sick here or share my notes with this dragon there the entire tribe might die!" She stabs too hard at the parchment, tearing a bloody blue gash through the center, stares at it, and collapses, rocking back and forth from the pressure. 

"Oh, Clearsight," he says, uncertain how to comfort her. "It can't be that bad. I promise, the entire fate of the tribe doesn't depend on a two year old dragonet. The worst that could happen is you don't get into the astronomy program and disappoint your mother, but no one is going to die from that." He pats her gently, doing his best to help calm her down. 

"And besides," he adds. "We don't think this is healthy, what you're doing in here. School will should be a welcome distraction, with classes and friends and other things to take your mind off things, to show you we're not so doomed after all." He chuckles a little to himself. 

Clearsight looks ahead, and finds herself suddenly hemmed in. What changed? What had she missed? The futures that were open to her before, the ones not involving school are gone, cut off. Everywhere she looks, everything she does, still leads to the same place. She thought her parents understood how important her work is, she thought the screaming nightmares had convinced them to let her plan everything before committing... but something has changed, and she's trapped. School tomorrow or school next week or school in a few days, and then everything goes off the rails. She needs more time. But time is nowhere to be found, except... 

"Please don't make me go yet," she sobs, and hopes. 

For a moment the future is in flux, and then. 

"All right, dearest. We'll wait until you're three." He tilts her face up to look at his. "But no more delay after that. The queen wants to make sure her seers are trained, and we're pushing our luck with our requests already. So, when you turn three, you're going to school. Agreed?"

The future flickers into place, as solid as a future could be. She can't delay things any further, this will have to do. "Yes, father," she agrees. "Let me get back to work, then." She'll need to start over, but at least this narrows things down. If only she were sure that made things better, not worse. There's no way to know for sure, the past is in the past. 

"Don't hurt yourself, Clearsight," he says, heading for the door. "It's not the end of the world if you let yourself sleep, you know."

If only he knew. 

She busies herself with her work, dipping claws in ink and mapping and remapping out futures, feeling oddly relaxed despite the sudden restriction. She'd always known the other timelines were unlikely, she had the same power as her, she's seen that he'll try to seek her out. She only has to worry about the ones where they're certain to meet, to get together, to fall in love, their visions of the future interacting and interfering until they make everything a tangled weave of threads, spreading out into the distance as far as she can see. 

She can see every single one, if she tries. She just has to find the right one. 

It's shaping up to be a pretty nice day at school, apart from all the ways that school can be terrible.

The scavengers in their cage are pretty active when she gets to school, which means Listener is distracted worrying about them and keeps spacing out and losing track of the book she's reading. When the two little creatures settle in for a nap, she breathes a sigh of relief and settles in herself, refocusing her attention on the history of the NightWing tribe. The book is telling her about how the royal line traces back almost all the way to the Scorching, which is pretty cool, but then someone at the far end of the room starts gazing longingly at the scavenger cage and thinking how they would make a nice snack, which, ew, and Listener wants to spin around and stuff a goose into whoever-it-is's face except she can't quite tell who and even if she could that would not be Appropriate Classroom Behaviour. And she doesn't have a goose. Maybe she'd like to have a goose, though, especially if her currently-unspecified classmate keeps thinking about how hungry they are.

But the classroom is still lovely, and the book still mostly manages to be interesting, and nobody's really going to eat the scavengers, they'd get in so much trouble. So overall, Listener thinks, things are going pretty great.

A new student enters the room, full of anxiety and concerns. She scans the room, matching up the dragons that she sees with what she's seen in her visions. Some are safe, but so many of them end poorly if she talks to them, in anger or resentment or... other far uglier outcomes. 

She's intercepted by the teacher before she can spend too much time dwelling on this, however, and Clearsight starts to feel better as she's shown around. The classroom is beautiful, full of plants and light and little water features, and the teacher is kind and helpful, and all of this provides a calming effect. Maybe this will be ok? 

"These are our pet scavengers," the teacher says, smiling with pride as she taps the top of a glass cage. "Two females. They're quite fierce, so don't stick your talons in the cage, just to be safe. We rotate whose turn it is to feed them, and we're doing a year-long study of their behavior. They're not just adorable; they're also quite fascinating."

They look like they're asleep, which is not very fascinating to Clearsight, but maybe they'll be more interesting later. She wonders what they eat. 

"A lot of fruit," Listener chimes in, "nuts, seeds, and sometimes bits of meat if we roast it for them." She likes taking care of the scavengers. Not just because she's concerned her fellow students might do it wrong and/or eat them. Also because they're neat.

"Oh, Listener," says the teacher. "Would you take care of our new student for the rest of the day?"

"Sure!" she says cheerfully. This new dragonet seems pretty wacky, but in an interesting way. Maybe they can be friends.

Clearsight turns to look at the other student, Listener. She's large for her age, and from looking at her, clearly a very successful hunter. And... she has silver scales beside her eyes, the ones that indicate mind reading. Oh, oh no.  

...or not. Maybe they cannot be friends. Whoops.

"I'm sorry," Clearsight says quickly, seeing Listener respond to her incautious thoughts. "I'm not used to mind readers. I don't know how to shield my thoughts or only think nice things or anything like that. I'm probably going to think a bunch of awful things at you and you'll end up hating me. Or," the more likely outcome, "I'll think a bunch of weird things around you and you'll think I'm a weirdo." 

"Don't worry," she says, cheering up a little, "I already know you're a weirdo. When you walked in, you looked around the classroom and immediately categorized every student into 'safe to be friends with' and 'doomed if I talk to them'. What is that about? And just checking - I'm not in the doomed camp, am I?"

"Not that I can tell," Clearsight says, looking. Actually, now that she's taking a closer look, the timelines with Listener are a lot brighter than the ones without, with a lot more smiling and joy. Befriending Listener is definitely on the right path. 

...that is, as long as she avoids the argument about the timeline scrolls and the one about Darkstalker and also all the fights about Listeners' various crushes and 

"By the Scorching!" she yelps, throwing up her wings and putting her talons over her ears. "Enough! Enough! I'll stay as far out of your brain as I can, I promise. I don't want to know anything about my future."

"Nothing?" Clearsight asks, surprised. "Even if I could keep you from -- "

"Nothing! Don't you dare!"

What. "But why?" Clearsight asks, now thoroughly confused. "If I could see where things go wrong and fix them, if I could fix whatever's wrong in your future, why wouldn't you want that?"

She cautiously lowers her talons. "My family is superstitious about seers," she explains. "We'd rather be surprised by life than know too much."

Clearsight isn't entirely sure what to do with that. She stares off into the distance, trying to wrap her mind around the strange concept, until a movement catches her eye. One of the scavengers is waking up, sitting up and stretching as she rubs her eyes and runs her fingers through the hair on her head. 

The scavenger is thinking small sleepy scavenger thoughts and it's just so cute and tragic and suddenly Listener is bursting at the seams to tell someone and, hey, if she makes friends with a seer, it's not like Clearsight won't find out, right? In fact maybe she's already found out.

"I have a secret plan," she whispers. "Maybe you know that already." Hopefully she knows that already because if she doesn't then Listener is going to feel dumb about telling her.

Clearsight shakes her head. There are several potential Listener plans in her future, and she's not one for thinking small or simple. But she doesn't have a good indication of which one Listener is referring to at the moment. 

And there, right on cue, is the feeling of dumbness. It's fine though. Can't go through life never doing anything you feel dumb about, that's no way to live.

"I'm going to free the scavengers one day," she explains in an undertone, glancing around furtively even though she can already tell no one is listening and even though it can only make her look more suspicious. The instinct to glance around furtively when saying secret things is just too strong. "As soon as I figure out the best way to do it."

"Why?" Clearsight asks. 

"Because they're sad," she says, watching the sleepy scavenger finish stretching and get up. "I can feel it. They don't like being trapped in here. They like being together, but they'd rather be free."

"You can feel it?" Clearsight repeats back to her, tilting her head in thought. "Like, real emotions?"

She nods firmly. "Small and muddled but very powerful. I feel it all the time when I'm in here. Poor little things."

Turning that over in her mind, Clearsight watches as the newly awake scavenger trips over the sleeping one on the way to get herself some water. The sleeping one wakes up, making quite a few squawking and screeching noises, and Clearsight observes the two of them stomping back and forth and squeaking at each other, almost as though they're having a real conversation. Then a lull, and the first scavenger goes and gets a piece of fruit, bringing it back to share with the second. 

"That looked like a peace offering," Clearsight says. 

"Exactly! That was exactly her feeling," Listener says enthusiastically. "Their feelings are crazy similar to ours. I need to ask some other mind readers if they've noticed it, too. Or maybe there are scrolls about it in the library. I don't think we've had many captive ones before, so maybe I'm making an awesome new discovery."

"All right, I'll help," Clearsight says, on sudden impulse. "Free them, that is. Whenever you're ready, just let me know." Clearsight can't remember the last time she did something that wasn't carefully chosen to make sure the right things came to pass. For the first time in a long time, she can do something that doesn't have any impact on anything of import, and with the chance to do something on her own, for herself, for her new friend, without having to worry about the end of her tribe... she feels a little rush, thinking about the freedom of it. 

Except... is that a small glimmer of darkness along that one path? And that other one? Maybe she should look into this a more closely...

Listener grins at her and gives her a friendly tail-bump. Conspiracy successfully founded!! Awesome!

Clearsight feels fluttery on the inside at the smile and tail bump, full of an unfamiliar feeling. 

Happiness? 

Maybe things are going to be ok. 

Meanwhile, a familiar brain approaches from across the room. As usual, she is a mostly-wordless experience of light and colour and sound, swirling with strange echoes of other people's thoughts.

Auuugh whyyyyy.

"Uh-oh," she whispers to Clearsight. "Here comes Weirdout."

Clearsight turns, wondering why someone would name their dragonet such a thing, only to see Darkstalker's sister coming towards them, staring right at Clearsight with her pale blue eyes. 

"She's four," Listener whispers, "but she's with us because whenever someone asks her what two plus two is, she says something like 'Archaeology?' or 'Lavender?' and no one knows what to do with her."

"Isn't her name Whiteout?" Clearsight asks, confused by the way Listener is reacting. 

"Yes," she says, still trying to keep her voice down, "but she's super weird."

She drifts to a halt directly in front of Clearsight; she's noticed Listener, but not who she is or what she's thinking, only that there is a dragon there to step around.

"Hi," she says, standing perfectly still and staring intently at Clearsight's left shoulder.

Okay, admittedly that is in fact somewhat weird, though Clearsight has seen it all before, and so her behavior is less of a surprise to Clearsight. 

It is unsettling though. She has the same powers as her brother (though very very different), and Clearsight knows that Whiteout is reading her, in her own inscrutable way. 

This moment doesn't seem to have a great effect on the timeline, though, at least as far as Clearsight can see, though the immediate future around her is strangely muddled (as it usually is). But further in the future, whatever she says here (at least with the possibilities she's considering) have very little impact. 

"Hello," Clearsight responds. 

"You're the dragon my brother's been waiting for," she says, hardly moving at all even to speak. "I'm glad you're here." She tilts her head fractionally to one side. "Were you doing something important?"

Doing something important? With Listener? If she says yes, what happens? Or no? She can't tell when she looks directly ahead, but in both cases, things get worse. Or sometimes worse? Sometimes Whiteout is distant and doesn't talk to her, other times, she's less distant? What changed? Where did all these potential worse futures come from? 

She flickers back and forth between the possibilities again and again, trying to figure out what to do, until...

"Sorry, what do you mean by important?" she asks, and things settle the way she remembers. She was always going to ask for clarification, she just couldn't see it. 

Whiteout peers at her like she's trying to solve a difficult puzzle.

"No," she says slowly, picking her way uncertainly through the sentences ahead, "not now. Before now. When you weren't here. Were you doing something important, to take so long?"

Oh. Oh! What should she say? Interactions with Whiteout are always confusing in the visions. She probably won't like it if Clearsight tells her what she was doing, it's probably best to equivocate about the tru-

Okay, nope, equivocating about this to Whiteout is a bad idea. 

"Yes," she says, very carefully, checking each word and phrase. "I was, making sure I could make things turn out right." 

She nods, relaxing slightly from her intense stillness. "Very sensible. That's all right, then."

Very gravely, like a diplomat greeting a foreign queen in a time of crisis, she says, "I hope we can be friends."

"I hope so too," she says, barely catching herself before she says things without checking, but it turns out all right and she says it anyways. Futures where she's at odds with Whiteout never turn out as well (though it's always hard to figure out why). 

She smiles, and dips her head, and turns to go, almost tripping over Listener in the process.

"Oh!" she says, startled and contrite. "I'm sorry. You weren't expecting me."

With an apologetic shrug, she steps carefully around Listener and leaves.

It takes her a second to disentangle that sentence, and even once she has it straight, she still has no idea what Whiteout meant by it. Listener wasn't expecting Whiteout to run into her? Well, yes, you generally aren't, right? What?

She turns to Clearsight and spreads her talons in a 'see?' gesture.

Clearsight shrugs back in return. "She's... interesting," she manages eventually, unsure how to condense everything she knows about her into a simple explanation.

"Sure. In a weird way," says Listener, rolling her shoulders and refolding her wings in an effort to banish the heebie-jeebies. "Anyway, what was all that about? Darkstalker? You know him?"

"Not... yet," Clearsight tells her, eliding over the exact intricacies of how much her existence is entangled with his. 

"He's intense," she says. "Maybe the smartest dragon in the history of the NightWings. He hatched on the brightest night, so he can read minds and see the future, which, as you can see," she shrugs a wing in Whiteout's general direction, "is a combination that makes everyone who has it super normal and easy to get along with. Honestly, though, as much as Weirdout gives me the creeps, I still like it better on her than on him. Darkstalker has this total vibe of knowing way too much about everyone, whereas half the time I think his sister forgets I'm not a rock."

Clearsight suddenly realizes that neither Darkstalker nor Whiteout had been in the seer training class. Whiteout is in a sense unsurprising, but what about Darkstalker? Had he been smarter than her, looked ahead to realize how awful the teacher is, and is pretending not to have found the class for that reason? Or is it that he didn't want anyone to know just how powerful he is, and is pretending to have not found it yet for that reason?

There are far too many reasons for him to be keeping his powers as quiet as he is, some good, some bad. She wishes she can be sure he's doing it for good reasons, and not the bad ones. 

She should stop thinking down this line, Listener has told her she doesn't want to listen very closely, but she doesn't want to give too much away too soon. "So when does everything get started," she asks her. 

"Depends what you want to get started with!" says Listener, trying very hard not to overhear whatever nonsense that was about seer training class. "We've got the scavengers over here, that big puzzle over there if you haven't had enough Weirdout for one day... I've been reading history, over at that station," she points. "But now that the scavengers are awake again I might just switch to taking notes about them. Or are you asking about the schedule? It's posted on the wall, right over there," she points in a different direction. "Free outdoor time starts at midnight, but there's an hour of group discussion first, where we all talk about what we've been learning."

So she can work on whatever she wants? Maybe that means she can-- no, working on her timeline scrolls leads to an uncomfortable discussion with her parents in Truthfinder's office in the future. Instead, she sticks with her new friend Listener taking notes on the scavengers, doing her best to act normal while the anxiety inside her builds and builds and builds. She's meeting him, she's meeting him very very soon. Is she ready? Can she make sure everything turns out alright? 

Listener does a good but not perfect job of staying oblivious to this.

At the end of group discussion, as the teacher is telling everyone they're free to go, she leans over and whispers, "Good luck with your future stuff, weirdo."

Clearsight ducks her head in embarrassed acknowledgment, and is torn by the desire to rush out the door and the desire to linger, to check through things one more time. In the end, she only hangs back a little bit, leaving at the back of the group of the rest of the students. 

Once outside, she pauses in the shade of a wide-branched tree, looking around and taking stock. Dragons are playing with one another, tossing pinecones back and forth or chasing each other around, splashing through puddles and climbing up and down trees. A few study together at the outdoor tables, and one is trying to get another to eat an unusual piece of fruit. Everyone is happy and carefree, unaware of the event about to take place. Everyone except her. 

But where is Darkstalker? He isn't angry that she moved their meeting to free period instead of before school, is he? There are only a few futures where he decided not to meet her after all, and none of them ended well. But no, that isn't it. He's trying to be clever, she can tell, though she can't see about what just yet...

The future settles into a consistent shape just slightly too late for Clearsight to do anything about it.

Whiteout is walking serenely across the schoolyard, stepping neatly around all the dragons in her way; she doesn't seem to see the game of marbles that she interrupts, glittering glass orbs scattered by a careless sweep of her elegant tail. Three frustrated older dragonets scramble in her wake, rounding up the marbles as best they can.

"Hey! Watch where you're walking!" snaps one of the three.

"Can't you use those weird eyes of yours?" another one growls.

The third contributes, "Or are IceWings blind as well as arrogant and vicious?"

And then, appearing as though out of nowhere, Darksight steps into view beside his sister.

"That was a little rude, don't you think?" he says mildly to the marble players.

"She ruined our game!" one of them complains.

"What a disaster," he says, in a superficially sympathetic tone that only serves to highlight just how blockheaded he thinks they're really being. "No wonder you had to resort to name-calling and bigotry."

None of them can think of anything to say to that.

Darkstalker drapes a wing across his sister's shoulders, halting her graceful advance.

"Whiteout, these dragons are upset because you knocked over their marbles when you walked through here," he explains.

"Oh." She turns back, blinking; it's the first sign she's given of noticing the incident at all. "I didn't realize what game you were playing. I thought the marbles were supposed to be beholden to the whims of the universe, and I was just another gust of wind." She tilts her head slightly, as though listening to something, and then smiles with captivating sweetness. "I'm sorry for disrupting your expectations."

The three of them shuffle uncertainly; then the biggest says, "That's all right. Sorry we yelled at you."

Whiteout stands very still for just slightly longer than a normal conversational pause should take, then says, "I understand. Thank you for deciding that yelling was not the place you wanted to be today."

She dips her snout in acknowledgment and then turns to keep walking.

Darkstalker opens his mouth, as the future crystallizes again around the words he's going to say—a parting shot to weaken the three dragons' friendship, sharp truths to tear them down with, she's cheating and he's unlucky in love and he's bored with the both of them—

His sister flicks her tail as she passes him, bapping him gently on the shoulder.

He deflates slightly, but follows his sister rather than forge ahead with his disrupted plan.

She takes a deep breath to steel herself, and then whee they come close to her tree she steps out of the shade and into the moonlight, a eyebrow raised. 

The siblings stop to meet her. Darkstalker looks excited and triumphant and a little bit terrified all at once.

Full of feelings of her own, she smiles at him. "Impressive," she tells him. 

"Oh?" He puts on his best charming grin, which, to his credit, really is quite charming. "What'd I do?"

It really is. (Are these her feelings? Or future hers? How can she even tell?) "I don't know how you set things up," she tells him, heart pounding, "but you covered everything, didn't you? Bravery, that's one. Caring about your sister, that's two. Standing up for the bullied, well, two and a half, since that's still your sister, but I'll give you an extra half point for how you got them to apologize so neatly, that's four. And you were intending to show off at the end and make some comments to show off your cleverness, until your sister cut you off, thanks for that, by the way." She nods at Whiteout. "Did you pay them? Because that was perfectly executed." (Is she doing it right? She thinks so. Nothing's gone bad yet that she can see.)

"Do I know you?" he asks, putting on an affronted air, or trying to; it's rather undercut by the mischievous smile he can't keep off his face.

She laughs, despite herself. He looks so cute, so handsome, and maybe it's the adrenaline or memories of the future but she can't help it. She's known him her whole life, even if they've never met. She loves the way he looks when he's surprised, when he's up to something clever (even though so many times such looks presage such awful things, they come with delight so much more), and so she laughs, even though she's trying not to. 

"Oh, wait," he says, playing up the bit. "Did we meet on that fishing trip last month? No, hang on, I'll remember. Aha! You're on the queen's Council of Ancient Elders, is that it?"

"You goof," she tells him, wrinkling her snout at him. 

"You're the one taking all the romance out of this," he protests. "It's supposed to go," he clears his throat and angles his head to one side as he puts on an imitation of Clearsight's voice, "'that was so brave, how you stood up for your sister like that!'" Head to the other side, back to his own voice but pitched to exaggerate his intonation, turning his smooth charm into a parody. "'Oh, that, what, no, it's what any dragon would do.'" Back to Clearsight, earnest and sweet. "'No, no - you're special, I can tell.'" Himself again. "'Not as special as you. There's a magic about you that I've never found in any other dragon!' 'Why - why do I feel as though I've known you forever?' 'Because you have... and you will.' Fireworks! True love and happiness for the rest of our lives!"

"The fireworks," Whiteout puts in gravely, "are figurative."

"A good thing too," Clearsight says, "the futures where he used fireworks he ends up starting a fire that burns through half the school gardens."

"I do?" he says, alarmed. "Really? How do I not—wait a second," he stops and points a claw at her accusingly, "you're making that up."

She laughs. (He's so cute here and now, offended like this. She's seen this before, she's felt it, but this is the first time feeling it for real.) "Has anyone ever told you're an awful seer?" she asks. "That flowery exchange isn't like me in the least."

"That's a relief," he says, bouncing back to his charming grin. "But couldn't we let this be a tiny bit more romantic? I mean, it's not every day that I meet my soulmate. Just this once, in fact. Right now."

It is happening right now. She's seen this moment in dozens of different ways, and the thousands of futures that follow from each, but what she's seen is nothing to compare with what she's feeling. Love and joy and terror and excitement, all wrapped together. She never wants this moment to end, and she needs to know what happens next, and she wants to fly away and hide from all the feelings inside her. He's beautiful and terrible and wonderful and everything is stretched out in front of them, so many ways for things to go wrong, or right. 

He looks earnestly into her eyes.

"Don't worry about the future," he says, reaching for her front talons to wrap them in his. "Just be here, with me, in this moment, where we are both as happy as we've ever been in our whole lives so far."

She wants to, she really does, but as they touch, a torrent of visions overwhelm her, flooding her with hundreds of futures, washing over her in wave after wave of possibilities. 

Darkstalker, in the twisted crown, killing dragons from across the room with a flick of his claw. 

Darkstalker, close to the age he is now, showing her a scroll with a hopeful expression.

A SeaWing, screaming in pain.

Her and Darkstalker, older, watching their dragonets roughhouse with Whiteouts', laughing without a worry in the world. 

Darkstalker collapsing in front of her, amidst the sound of ominous thunder. 

Blue IceWing blood, staining the earth like ink.

Darkstalker taking part in a discussion between a delegations of IceWings and the NightWing queen, the air still tense but full of hope.

A quartet of sapphires, given as a gift. 

Walking on ancient creaky talons to snuggle up with him on the porch, watching the sun set over the hills together.

The two of them only a little older, hiding together with Whiteout and a green SeaWing, worried about something.

Opening the royal treasury to bestow presents on their grandchildren. 

NightWings writhing before the throne, pleading and screaming as they clawed out their own eyes. 

Betrayal woven into copper wires. 

A trip to the sea. 

A green SeaWing in tears. 

She felt them wash over her again and again, until finally she pushed through to the surface and breathed, gasping for air, opening her eyes on this time, this reality, where none the wonderful or awful things have happened. Yet. 

Darkstalker is still gazing into her eyes, but now fairly vibrating with anxiety.

"Are you all right?"

"You didn't get any of that?" she asks. Even if he didn't get the same giant wave of futures crashing over him too, he still has mindreading. 

"I'm—trying not to look," he admits. "Seems unfair, you know? You can't read my mind."

Clearsight can't help but smile a little when he says that. In futures where he promises never to look, the anxiety of not being ever able to cause some problems, and universes where he voices no consideration have their own issues. This one is the most likely, but best outcome. She spares a moment (but only a moment, since he wants her here in this moment, and for that matter so does she; being in this moment makes her giddy) to take a quick peek into the futures, but nothing has changed since this morning, the decision had already been made. 

"I appreciate that," she tells him, still smiling. 

"It's not that bad, is it?" he asks, curious and a little concerned. "Our future? I've seen mostly good things."

"It's not that bad," she tells him, "at least, depending on how much you enjoy the average apocalypse." 

He laughs. It's only a little forced.

"I'm Darkstalker, by the way," he says, recovering his charming grin.

The laugher is only forced at the end, which means interpreting it as a joke is his natural (original) response. Which means he didn't (originally) read her mind, since she wasn't joking. 

"I'm Tailbite," she says, joking for real this time. "That's who you were looking for, right?" 

He laughs again, and this time it's not just unforced, it's a true loss of composure, his first true loss of composure since she first saw him. (His first true loss of composure in a lot longer than that.) She's just so—funny, cute, sincere, herself. She's just so herself. It makes him want to laugh until he falls down, like he's some kind of baby with no self-control, instead of a four-year-old dragon more than halfway to being grown.

She smiles and laughs too. He's still handsome, and she can still remember (not look! Not at the moment anyways) all the wonderful times they will/may spend together, and she can't help but feel so much delight and love in this moment. They're meeting here, for the first time, and it's so joyful and precious, and he's over there laughing so happily about her and who she is, and for a moment everything is wonderful. For a moment, she can put all of the horrible fates out of her mind and simply be there with him, laughing and excited about everything delightful that they're going to do together, forgetting her terrible purpose and the terrible outcomes she must always strive to prevent. 

But only for a moment. Her task still stretches ahead of her. 

Just as the moment is fading, Whiteout speaks up. "It's a good time to go hunting."

"Oh, what a great idea," says Darkstalker. "Come on, Clearsight. What's your favourite? Oh, no, wait, let me guess... is it... deer? You look like a deer person. No, no! I've got it! Owls!"