Knife in hand, Gillwyn kept herself between the creature and Cana. Slowly, she got her breathing under control and cooled her head. Letting out a long exhale, she lowered her knife and returned it to her sheath.

Protective instincts, she thought with some satisfaction. Now I know I love her.

The big creature, all legs and abdomen, had scuttled down from an oak to regard the girls. It was larger than a hunting hound, had long fangs, and watched them with black eyes like marbles of volcanic glass.

Gillwyn grinned. "Easy, Cana. It's just a megarach. He's a handsome one, too. They've been coming down from Melcia lately. Even the wild breeds are harmless."

Cana hid herself behind Gillwyn. "I don't like it. It's horrid. Send it away."

Who ever heard of a girl who didn't like megarachs? The tiny and aggressive ones with venomous bites, sure, but giant spiders didn't do anything but make silk and nuzzle against your hand. Sweet dispositions were as integral to a megarach's nature as its shell. You'd sooner find a girl who thought ponies were disgusting.

She just needs to get used to them, Gillwyn decided

This one had a mottled green shell, as well as a yellow pattern on his abdomen that looked like a sunburst. The flashy marking was what identified the gender as well as the species. He was a Melcian bird-eating ikimba megarach— hard to domesticate because of their tendency to climb trees and wander. The ikimba lifted his front left foot and stamped on the ground three times.

"It's gonna charge!" Cana squeaked as she buried her face into Gillwyn's back.

Gillwyn frowned. The stamping wasn't a sign of aggression. It wasn't even a thing megarachs of any kind did as far as she knew. This was, however, a signal for family to recognize each other.

The ikimba's scent was warm and comforting. Pa needs to follow his own blustering rules, Gillwyn thought angrily. "Close your eyes. It'll be over in a bit."

Cana covered her face with her hands as she shuddered.

With a curt gesture, Gillwyn signaled her pa to shift quickly. The ikimba's extra legs shrank into its body, and it stood upright. Mottled shell gave way to flesh, and the adorable face became pa's blustering bug-eyed gob. He was more skilled with his shifting than Gillwyn or even ma. His clothes were still on his back as he reassumed his human shape. It was a feat Gillwyn couldn't quite imitate yet, assimilating garments and possessions into the chosen form. Winds, just becoming a creature so different in nature was astonishing. Gillwyn could only manage mammals.

Of the races of the proteurim, one alone had the talent to take the remnant of a beast and make it as a part of themselves— make themselves it. Folklore spoke of werewolves, wereboars, and werelions, the so-called curse of lycanthropy transforming man into animal. Those stories didn't touch upon the truth, that werebeasts were all the same race. There was only the weres.

"It's alright now," Gillwyn said in a flat voice. "Pa scared it off."

Cana looked up, and she began thanking Goodman Forester in a frantic babble for coming to their rescue. Her eyes darted from side to side, seeking out where her tormentor had run off to. Pa assured her it was no trouble and scratched at the back of his head, all while giving his displeased daughter contrite looks.

If bad smells, bloody remains, and puking didn't ruin our first real courting, he certainly did. Winds and storms.

"Why are you here?" Gillwyn asked. She tried her best to keep her voice civil, but the demand in her question would be difficult to miss.

Pa cleared his throat. He at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself. "Tracking your sister. I thought I... err... heard her over this way." His eyes traced from Gillwyn to Cana and back again. "Must have just been you girls."

"I'm glad you're here, Goodman," Cana said.

Gillwyn couldn't help but feel a bit insulted.

"Not just for the spider. Gillwyn found something dead in the wood."

Pa's eyes lit up in interest. "Oh? What and where?"

Gillwyn pointed to the north. "Not far from the foot of my hill. About a hundred paces past the treeline. I'm not sure what it was or what did it in, but it stank of blight."

"Ravens are all over it," Cana added, and she swallowed as if the memory threatened to make her sick again.

Pa frowned and looked in the direction Gillwyn indicated. "Haven't been seeing signs of blight, but... there's been a fell scent about the Senwood the past few days."

"Cana also smelled it," Gillwyn said. She raised an eyebrow so her pa would note the importance in that detail.

Pa heard and understood. "Just to be safe, you girls should get to the house. Cana, if it's all the same to you, I'll send word to the mill that you'll bed down with us tonight. I don't care for the thought of you on the road this close to evening."

Cana nodded, relieved. "Of course. Thank you, Goodman."

Gillwyn felt an anxious flutter but kept it under control. "Ma, Tenel, and the twins?"

"They can stay in town with your Aunt Nat. It's Cindel that's worrying me. I need to find her before the light starts fading."

"We'll find her," Gillwyn offered. "I got my knife in case of trouble, and you need to see to the remains."

Pa was hesitant.

"I know how to find Cindel," Gillwyn argued. "I'm not the one she's hiding from."

Pa sighed. He stepped closer to her and took her hand. "Be careful. Just in case. Might not be a beast out there."

He passed something into her hand so that Cana wouldn't see. Gillwyn looked down at the tiny, iron spike pa had given her. Long, but no thicker than a needle. Gillwyn felt a cold sweat break out along her back.

A Dekaam spike. Useless against most beasts, but supremely powerful against creatures with ether in their blood. Mortals, shifters, fey, and even the mighty were vulnerable to it when used by someone who knew how.

Gillwyn closed her fist over the spike and prayed to the winds that it wouldn't be needed. She despised the arts of the old masters just as much as pa did, yet she dutifully learned the secret ways to place a spike. The Dekaam had been turned against the proteurim at the end of an age. Were it a speck less effective at defending against human arcanists, the discipline would have died out centuries ago among shifters. Even so, maybe it should have.

"We'll be careful," Gillwyn promised. "Eyes open. Ears clear. Nose to the wind."

Pa patted the top of her head. "Atta girl, Gill. Collect Cindel and head straight home. If all three of you aren't back by the time I am, I'll raise the whole blustering militia to go scouring for you, so don't dawdle."

Gillwyn thumped her fist to the center of her chest in a mock salute. "Yessir!"

"Yes, Goodman," Cana said

Pa lingered a moment, torn about leaving them on their own. He looked Gillwyn over, and she had the notion he was thinking about giving his powered bow to her. Blustering worrywart. As if she could even draw it, let alone hit her target.

"Get going," she scolded him. "The way you're carrying about, I might start thinking there is something to be afraid of. Shoo."

Pa grumbled under his breath as he left the road and disappeared into the foliage. Weres didn't have as sharp of hearing as other shifters, particularly kits, but she still caught enough of her pa's grousing to know she ought give him a thumping the next time they crossed paths.

Turning back to Cana, that fluttering feeling returned. A sleepover was nothing new. One girl stayed the night with the other's family many times over the years. Now, it was different, and the shy smile Cana was returning spoke to how she felt the same way.

"You know where your sister will be?" Cana asked.

Sister? What sister?

Gillwyn almost needed to poke herself with the Dekaam spike to snap out of this Cana-induced trance. "I've an idea or two."

"There won't be many more of those megarachs, will there?"

Gillwyn chuckled and took her by the hand to lead her into the wood again. "Somehow, I don't think so."

With a quiet sigh of relief, Cana fell into step beside her. They didn't go more than ten paces before Gillwyn brought them to a halt. "Let's just check one thing before we go gallivanting longer than we need to."

Cana raised an eyebrow in question.

Cupping hands around her mouth, Gillwyn called out to the surrounding trees. "Pa's gone off, Cindel. I don't know what you did, but I'm not gonna get you in hot water over it."

"You think she's hiding because she did something bad?" Cana asked. "Your father didn't mention anything like that."

"Playing to the averages," Gillwyn replied in a low voice.

By the time the words were out of her mouth, there was a rustling in the brush ahead. Sure enough, Cindel's face peeked out from the leaves. Her light brown hair was in tangles, bits of twigs and detritus woven into the wild mess on her head. Smudges of dirt marred her freckled cheeks, and her buggy eyes squinted in the sunlight. "Promise you won't tattle?"

Cana stood in shock, but Gillwyn was well-accustomed to her sister's wildness. Some Foresters had more wereblood in them than others.

"Winds take you, Cin," Gillwyn scolded. "Couldn't you hear that pa's worried? Just own up. He'll be too pleased to have you safe to worry over whatever you're hiding from."

"What did you even do?" Cana asked, stepping closer.

Cindel eyed Cana suspiciously. She was the same age as Cana but had never been near as close to her as Gillwyn. To be honest, they got on like tomcats squabbling over saucers.

"Didn't do nothing needs repeating," Cindel said at last. She got a wicked grin as she said it. "Pa won't even notice what 'til he goes for his nightcap."

"Cindel Forester, you didn't," Gillwyn gasped. "Come on out of those bushes, and let's get you home."

A slight flush showed through Cindel's muddy cheeks. "Well, as to that..."

She emerged. Cana squeaked and turned her back, and Gillwyn rubbed at her temples in exasperation. Cindel didn't have a single stitch of clothing left to her.

Not one, but blustering two of her family members were being unforgivable dolts when it came to their shifting today. At least pa had the wherewithal to have clothes on when he came back to his true body. Cindel had no such excuse.

Behold, Cana, Gillwyn thought wryly. This is what true shamelessness really looks like.

Cindel stood proud. Stance wide and hands on her hips. Her grand display was marred only slightly when she dug in her ear with a finger to pick out bits of dirt.

Cana's face was beet red and her eyes clamped shut. "Y-you atrocity!" she shrieked. "Getting plastered and wandering naked into the Senwood? The very idea!"

Cindel strolled up and draped an arm around Gillwyn's shoulder. "Boo diddly hoo, Princess. Maybe if Gill did the same, you wouldn't be so buggered up the arse about it."

The scandalized shout Cana returned to that could have summoned the dead.

Gillwyn leveled a disapproving frown at her sister and received a lopsided grin in return. Cindel was certainly pleased with herself, no matter that she'd been a silk thread's breadth from exposing the family secret. With a world-weary sigh, Gillwyn started to pull her dress over her head.

Cana turned red enough that she was liable to burst into flames. "W-w-what are you doing?"

"Can't let her swagger home like this, can we?" Gillwyn replied. "She would if I let her."

Cana, still turned away, crouched down and covered her face.

"I have my shift," Gillwyn said to assure her, but she couldn't be sure Cana heard it through all that anxious moaning.

Once she tossed the dress into Cindel's face, Gillwyn crouched next to Cana and tried to get her to open her eyes. She gestured towards her cotton shift, shapeless and plain. "See? Nothing so bold."

Calming herself, Cana lowered her hands.

Cindel had Gillwyn's dress on now. She snickered. "You should be happy, Princess. Gill's much bigger than I am." She cupped her hands over her chest and puckered her lips.

"Bite your tongue, you lush!" Gillwyn shouted. Her sister's antics just crossed a line. Cindel was often gleefully inappropriate, but launching full speed into bedroom humor was too far even for her.

Cindel pursed her lips into a disgruntled pout and looked away.

"Beast," Cana whispered under her breath. "Unforgivable beast. How are you even related to her?"

Something in the way Cana said it, though perhaps it was the way Cana remained so flustered, put an unpleasant weight in Gillwyn's stomach. Cana's recriminatory words carried a faint note of something that could have been mistaken for longing within them. It gave Gillwyn a small but unwelcome notion that she was nothing more than a second choice.

She looked over her shoulder to Cindel, standing with arms crossed and shuffling her feet. Then to Cana, who was holding back tears of frustration.

"Let's go," Gillwyn said to them both. Her voice sounded defeated and sad in her own ears. "Pa will be worried if we're not home before he is."

"Err..." Cindel began.

Gillwyn gave her sister a hard look while guiding Cana to stand. "I'll fill up Pa's bottle from the cellar. Just don't do this again."

Cindel's eyes went wide. "You know where he keeps his stash?"

"Some of us are more subtle about things," Gillwyn muttered.

That brought an admiring grin from Cindel, and a shocked look from Cana.

"Only a sip," she explained in a rush. "Now and then."

Cana covered her mouth and giggled.

They returned to the road. Gillwyn walked between Cindel and Cana for a number of reasons. Chiefly to keep them from spatting again, also because she didn't much care for the thought of them being closer to each other than necessary. There was also the slim chance of coming across someone else on the road, and Gillwyn could use these two to conceal that she was strolling about in her shift.

Cindel walked with her hands folded behind her head. Cana, with hands clasped in front of her. Gillwyn herself had never been so conscious of where her hands were before. She didn't know what to do with them. How did she usually walk? Great mysteries without answers.

The house came into sight. It was a two-story estate, and one of the wings was built from younger wood than the rest. Pa and Goodman Carpenter added that on two years earlier once the twins were old enough to move out of ma and pa's bedroom. Tenel and Cindel received new rooms also, leaving Gillwyn to keep the bedroom the three older sisters had previously shared.

Cana had a look in her eyes like she was seeing a palace. While it was true that the Foresters weren't wealthy, Pa earned respectable coin from his work for the headman and tending groves for the woodcutters. It allowed his family to live comfortably. In contrast, Cana and her parents lived in a single-room dwelling beneath the windmill in Moorhaven's village square.

In a cynical moment, Gillwyn wondered how much of Cana's courting preference was due to Goodman Forester's lack of sons.

She shook the ugly thought away. It was unworthy of Cana, who had never, ever shown herself to be anything other than a genuine soul. Gillwyn felt soiled and found herself wanting to do something for Cana out of penance.

A rustle off the the side drew her attention away from lovesick musings. Cindel was rummaging through dress pockets and drew out the panther paw.

Gillwyn stifled a cry. Cindel wouldn't, would she? Not only was Cana right there, but Pa had given it to her.

Cindel peered at the hunting trophy and wrinkled her nose. She looked to Gillwyn in question.

"Pa made it for me," she said. Nervous, she held out her hand for it.

Cindel gave it over without hesitation or comment.

Feeling awash with relief, Gillwyn let out the breath she'd been holding. She clutched the paw to her chest, taking comfort from having it with her again.

She told Cana to make herself at home while she took Cindel to the back of the house. Gillwyn all but tore her dress off of her sister, then shoved her into the wash basin. Cindel squawked in protest, but was handily overpowered.

"How are you so floundering strong?" she shouted.

"Swearing by water spirits for the occasion?" Gillwyn asked sweetly. She pulled a rope attached to the rain tower above and dropped a river of cold water onto her sister's muddy head. As Cindel sputtered and lost her footing, Gillwyn examined her nails. "Must be the bear in me."

After setting the panther paw on a standing shelf that held bathing supplies, Gillwyn gave the rope another tug to stop the torrent. She did her best to ignore Cindel's ranting and sat down on the edge of the washbasin with her feet dangling in the water. She pulled Cindel to have her back between her knees, then began the arduous task of detangling Cindel's hair and pulling out the forest she brought back on her head.

Cindel bore it with a scowl, but at least she stopped struggling. She stank. Not just of mud and refuse, but also blood.

"Rabbit?" Gillwyn asked.

"Eh? Oh. Yeah. Didn't realize drinking made you hungry."

Not in Gillwyn's limited experience, but Cindel had always been built differently. She never quite took to medicines from the sky woman in the same way either. Ma said it was because the wereblood was stronger in Cindel than the rest of them. Less human. More pure.

The bathwater quickly became brown as a bog as Cindel scrubbed herself clean. She asked for a cake of tallow, and Gillwyn retrieved one for her from the shelf. Lather soon floated on top of the water.

Gillwyn picked a goathead from her sister's hair. "Winds, how do you even get like this? It shouldn't have stayed once you shifted."

"You don't go naked into the wood ever?" Cindel asked. "Try it. It's grand."

Gillwyn clucked her tongue.

"Take Cana. Show her Maple's grove. You'll both be naked inside of five..."

"Stop it," Gillwyn hissed.

"Minutes," Cindel grumbled to complete her slander.

Gillwyn worked a comb through her sister's hair, mindful of tugging no matter how angry Cindel made her. "What's gotten into you? Ever since we found you, you've been... mean. Not just to Cana, but to me also. That's not like you."

"You don't know me," Cindel snarled.

"I'm starting to think that's true," Gillwyn said. "Are you..." She swallowed. "Are you upset that we were together?"

"As in jealous?" Cindel scoffed. She lifted her nose to the air in a snooty manner. "Hardly. No accounting for taste, but you can court whoever you want. I like boys."

Gillwyn smirked. "You like everyone."

She could feel Cindel clenching her teeth.

"You don't know me," she muttered once again.

A sullen silence passed between them. Gillwyn had Cindel's hair mostly in order, and she was about to leave her blustering boar of a sister to do the rest herself when Cindel spoke up again.

"You love her?" she asked.

Gillwyn continued with the combing. "I do," she whispered. "So much. I do."

Cindel stood abruptly and snatched a towel from the shelf. She wrapped it around herself and stormed off. "Good thing she knows it now."

Taking in the air, Gillwyn felt herself grow pale. A scent of heather and amaranth hid beneath that of the tallow and bathwater. She turned and found Cana leaning against a leg of the rain tower. Her eyes were wide and staring at Gillwyn.

"You do?" she asked in a small voice.

Blustering, vindictive snot of a bratty, little sister. Cindel knew. She knew that Cana had come outside when she asked.

Gillwyn shot off the edge of the washbasin in a rush, then stood motionless. Uncertain of what she should do or say, she just stood there, dripping like a log in the rain. Winds take Cindel. Gillwyn wished she would have tugged her ratty hair right off her scalp.

Cana came closer. Only one step and no more. She held back.

Heart thundering in her chest, Gillwyn looked around for an opening to escape. She could go live in the Senwood. Never need to see another human again so long as she lived.

Then again, Cana was still here. She hadn't fled yet either.

Gillwyn's heart settled, and the strangest calm she ever felt came over her. She met Cana's eyes.

"Do you want to kiss me?" she asked.

Timid, Cana nodded.

"Then kiss me. What are you waiting for?"

In a far corner of her brain, Gillwyn wondered who it was that said all that. Certainly not her. Cindel wasn't the only shifter she didn't know anymore.

Cana looked off to the side and bit her lower lip anxiously.

Gillwyn stepped forward. She hooked a finger through the loose collar of Cana's dress and pulled Cana to her until their noses were all but touching. "Kiss me," she repeated in a whisper, "and I'll kiss you back."

Sweet, merciful winds! I've got no business calling anyone else shameless.

Cana kissed her.