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“And then what happened?" asks the little spiderling softly, crawling about in the older woman's lap and looking up at her with eight shimmering black eyes. “After happily ever after?"

The mountain lioness pets her daughter's hair back, keeping it from falling in her face and poking one of those precious eyes. She had all too much experience with that, after all…

“Well…what do you think, Myra? I've only got one eye, I can only see the words on the paper. Surely you can see dozens more possibilities with your eight," she purrs, encouraging the little one to think, to dream, to be creative. She'd need to be creative to weave the gorgeous silken webs her ancestors were known for. She was old enough now that her room would occasionally become a nest of primordial silken blobs that were yet to become anything. The blueprints were in her genes, she knew it, but higher thought kept them all back from reaching full potential.

"Hmm…" Myra tilts her little head in thought, lowering her abdomen to properly sit on Lyalla's lap again. "I think…I think the princess decides to be a phoenix girl, actually. That's why she likes the dragon prince so much! And…and he helps her through the ritual, and she grows greeaaaat big red wings!" The spiderling stands up on her six little legs and stretches her arms out to illustrate.

"Good, keep going, tell-"

A rustling of footsteps outside interrupts Lyalla, one ear flicking in the direction of the sound. She turns her head instinctively, her pupils turning to black slits against an amber background. The only person that had gone out tonight was her wayward son, who insisted time and time again on visiting that damned altar. As much as he could never admit it, losing his first father hurt him deeply, and part of his consistent returns was due to his confused grief. But that made the odd gait of his footsteps tonight scare the woman that much more. There were countless things that could take advantage of a young, solitary were. Many of which he could have brought home with him.

“How about this," she finally remarks, setting her young daughter on the ground with a piece of paper and some finger paints. “You paint me a pretty picture of what that girl looks like as a phoenix, okay? I hear Gael coming home, I'm gonna go meet him."

Delighted at the chance, Myra dips both hands directly into the paint and starts going to work with gorgeous rounds of reds and oranges.

“Okay! Thanks, Miss Lyalla!!"

She gives her daughter a patient smile and closes the door to her daughter's playroom as easily as she can. Then and only then does she set off running, soft padded feet silent against first carpet, then hardwood, then grass, until she's on all fours sprinting toward the heavy sound of her son's footsteps in the forest, her mind racing with panic. She can smell him. She can smell the worry, the fear. She can smell…human. No. No no no, god no-

“Gael!!" she roars out. “Gael, I can hear-"

And then she comes to a skidding stop when she sees what's happening. All at once her fear for his safety is gone. Replaced by something else.

Horror.

She never expected this, not out of sweet Gael, not out of her helpful son who brought home dinner every night and played so gently with the town's children and helped Lady Sophie across the street. Not out of little Gael who had the far away eyes and clutched a blanket a little too tightly across his body. Not the boy she held the first year he'd lived with her as he was trying to fall asleep to keep away nightmares about helpless, mauled human women and their glassy eyes as they died. Never in her life did she think…but the truth was staring her in the face. Her precious son, carrying in a stout human girl three quarters of his size, looked down with guilt.

“...hi, mom. This is Ophelia," he starts, voice hesitant and almost ashamed as he encourages the girl to look at his adoptive mother with a coaxing motion from his paw. She turns her head toward the woman, and in her face is a quiet cry for help. That's all the evidence Lyalla needs to draw her claws.

“Put her down. Now."

Gael goes on the defensive immediately, tucking the girl closer to his chest.

“Mom, I-"

“Did I hesitate?? NOW."

Gael gives an apologetic look to the girl, setting her down gingerly in the grass and raising both hands. She holds herself, a thin nightgown only barely protecting her from the elements, looking ashamed. Lyalla's stomach twists and turns, but she keeps herself upright.

“How COULD you?! I trusted you! I thought you would never do that, not after what you went through as a child! This girl had her WHOLE LIFE ahead of her, she had the chance to be a wife and a mother, and you tore that away from her!"

"Mom, I-"

"What you've done is criminal, Gael. I didn't raise you like that! I didn't teach you to traumatize young women!"

Her son tears up and tries to interrupt Lyalla.

“Mom, please, listen-"

"I don't want to hear a single word out of your mouth, young man. You have seventy two hours to get your things OUT of my house, and anything you leave behind will be-"

“He never touched me!" squeaks the girl, shrill over Lyalla's growling tone.

It takes a moment for the lioness to register these words, still caught in the sharp, burning hold of wrath. When it does finally dawn on her, she looks back over at the little human, and she can tell immediately those hazel eyes are telling the truth.

"I'm...sorry?"

“He didn't touch me, ma'am. I was the one that begged to stay with him."

Lyalla has to take a few moments to process this complete subversion of her expectations, first looking at the young woman, and then at Gael, who has a literal kicked puppy expression, complete with the head bow. Admittedly, that…did sound like something her son would do. Going to the altar to find a helpless girl that was trying to escape a bad situation and figuring that the best place to bring her was here? It was an idea that she wanted to believe, and one that was consistent with his character. But the lioness was hardly naive, she knew damn well that if her son had been coercing this poor girl behind her back, then she was likely to say anything for fear of being punished.

The truth was, she couldn't fully trust either of them while they were together. What she needed was to separate them and then question them individually, maybe with the help of a friend. If their stories matched up, then thank god. Thank god, Gael was exactly the man she hoped he'd turn out to be. If not, well…she'd have to make the hardest choice of her life, but one she'd prepared herself for since the day she decided to foster young, vulnerable weres.

“...how about you two get inside the walls," Lyalla growls, low and suspicious, her eyes boring holes through her only-just-adult son.

“...walls?..." the girl---Ophelia, she remembers---asks, looking innocently up at Gael, and then Lyalla.

“To protect our settlement from human invaders. You're not the only ones who are hunted," the woman clarifies, speaking over her son, who, as far as she was concerned, lost his privilege to do so for the time being. “Come. With me, so the guards don't shoot the both of you on pretenses." Lyalla turns tail---literally, the sand-colored thing flicks in the air sharply as she does so---and starts marching to the north, expecting the two to follow.

There's a long silence between Gael and Ophelia as they pick up and follow slowly behind.

“So…your mother, she's a…"

“Very intense woman, yes. But not usually this much."

“That's not what---I mean, I didn't---...okay," Ophelia sighs, letting Gael walk ahead a few paces before giving in and following close behind.

The further the trio go into the forest, the more glowing golden light breaks through the line of trees. There must be a proper town up ahead. Hold on. Was there a whole TOWN of werewolves? Were…lions? How long had they been hiding from humanity? Surrounded by those that would hunt them down and exterminate them if they knew they existed? Ophelia didn't know, and maybe she didn't want to. She wasn't exactly a librarian, but even she had the good sense to know that their history was likely riddled with pain.

The lioness lifts up the branches of a thick shrub to let her son and Ophelia through, and all at once the girl is met with a great stone wall, three times Gael's height, solid but cobbled together as if in a hurry. Certain stones didn't fit quite right, some were noticeably a different color, others were marked with arrow pocks and scratch marks across the surface, as if the wall were being constructed in the middle of a battle.

“So, mom-"

“Choose your words carefully," Lyalla snarls, snapping her head to look in his direction, warning him not to speak out of line with the current, heavy accusations on him.

The werewolf gulps, then continues, voice lower as not to anger his mother any more.

“I don't know what humans eat."

Lyalla takes a few moments to register this statement through her contained fury. For a moment, he doesn't think she's going to answer as she knocks on the wall in the typical entrance pattern. (A first for the both of them---usually by looks alone they're allowed access into the town's gate, but with the human by their side, it's locked tight. A representative would need to grab them.)

“They're omnivores, Gael. They can eat just about anything. You brought her home and you didn't think to ask her what she eats?"

He sputters awkwardly, looking back and forth between his mom and the girl he brought into the town. Ophelia gives him a slightly amused look, then whistles, pretending to be distracted.

“O-of course I did!! But, she, um. She kept saying recipes I don't know…"

“Oh, then maybe you know shepherd's pie, ma'am?" Ophelia asks, meek still under the lioness's hard gaze.

But that gaze changes when she's looking at Ophelia alone, shifting into something much calmer. Even…happy?

“I'm afraid not. But I have a friend who-"

“Did someone say shepherd's pie??" calls a voice from above, causing everyone to look straight up to the top of the wall. A little green head looks down on them, then waves with a tri-fingered hand.

“Ozzy, you sonuvabitch! Get down here and let us in!" Gael calls up at the rooftop figure.

“I dunno man, you got those wild hops I asked you for??" the other voice calls back teasingly.

“Ozzy!!"

“Alright, alright, I'm coming!"

There's a brief gap in conversation where the figure overhead ducks out of sight, then starts going down the wall. Then, gradually, the uneven stone starts to shift and move, black bits of flint and onyx moving up the wall into an arch that dissipates the stone around it into an open doorway.