| Astra's memories of the night were hazy after the point when she had
killed the boar, but she didn't think that she had killed again. One night
successfully negotiated, two to go. At least she seemed to be fully human
during the day; she had feared that she might remain in bestial form throughout
the whole time that the moon was full, but apparently the wolf in her emerged
only between moonrise and moonset - roughly from dusk till dawn.
Even before surveying the valley, her first priority was to cleanse herself, for she felt that the spatters of blood on her skin besmirched her not just literally but metaphorically too. She found a suitable pool not too far away: small, but deep and with clear water. She drank deeply first, both to slake her thirst and to wash away the lingering taste of blood. Then she immersed herself in the water. It was cold, but tolerable for one as hardy as she. Having managed to remove the blood, she returned to her vantage point overlooking the valley, at a brisk run in an attempt to get warm. Looking across the valley to check that it was as deserted as she thought:
|
