The pack was brave. The pack was fierce and wily and skilled at the hunt and in battle. The pack was also smart enough to know what the copper lined, oak barrel tub on the back porch meant.

Even without the bottles that smelled of wild places and growing things and chemicals and wet dog, they knew. And while none of them actually minded the process, they didn't mean to make it easy on their woman. The game was entirely too entertaining to ruin it for anyone by giving up.

Which was why they'd sat, patient pretty while she carted all her supplies out and laid them out, set them up. And just as soon as she'd finished. As soon as she turned and before she'd had a chance to consider tensing to snag one of them up by the scruff, they scattered.

With laughing yips and chortling moans, tails flagging, every one of them scampered off into the fairy gardens surrounding the redneck's mountain home. Some went to ground and lay there, panting their amused excitement with lolling tongues and bodies taut to run again should she get close. Some kept on through the shadows and shade dappled in colors of late coming Spring and just born Summer, right into the deep and cooling greens of the woods beyond. And some, a couple, kept in sight. Just close enough to tempt, to tease, but not so close as to be caught until it was their turn.

In the end, as always, what should have taken a handful of hours wound up taking more than a full day and the deck, and Thorn were utterly drenched. But the time had been full of breathless laughter, halfhearted curses and growls and mutters.

"All'a y'all." Sitting with her back against one of the railing's supports, pointing a mock-stern finger from one to the rest in a jerky sweep. "Y'all're spoiled fucks an' don' think I don' know you know that I know you know it."

"We'll take this back up next month." And not once did she, would she, consider cheating and using her magics, or Power to make it faster.

"Do you remember when we first met?" The young man tossed the question back over his copper-tanned shoulder casual as you please. Didn't even stop digging in the soft, black earth under the now-wild apple trees for roots. And grubs.

Eyes pinched in confusion she sat back on her heels and stared at him like he'd bumped his damn head. "Oh, 'cause I'm gonna forget that?"

Her tone of voice paired perfectly with the expressive eye roll, right down to the scoff at the end like a flick.

Her eldest son, this child of her heart whom she could not love more had he been born of her own flesh, sliced off a smart-assed grin just for her while flicking the waist length braid of raven's wing black over a shoulder to lay down his back. Finally, once he'd found what he'd been looking for, set aside his tools and treasure, turned on his knees to face her and leaned back against the tree nearest him.

Draping an arm across the top of an up-raised knee, he tucked the heel of his other foot back against a thigh hugged by faded, worn denim. And the jack ass laughed at the memory. "The look on your face. Your eyes, they bugged." Totally didn't help that he used his fingers to mimic said eye bugging.

His mirth and teasing set hers off in response. A tangle of deep green and rich brown got tossed at his head, half heartedly. "Oh right, 'cause you an' William were oh so cool about it." Sarcasm has a flavor; today's was earthworm and dirt.

Dorian sputtered, tongue flicking awkwardly in an effort to clear the taste, and grit, from his mouth. While snickering. "Hell. All I saw was some Wasicun, not a lot older than me, come to take whatever my Uncle'd had left at the end." His snort eloquently told his opinion of both her, at the time, and his Uncle's estate. "And then, then they tell us we're going to leave everything we've ever known, everyone we've ever known, and go live with this fancy chick?" His tone went derisive, a verbal sneer meant to cut to the bone (a trait he'd picked up from the woman sitting sprawled next to him in the grass).

"You thought we'd drive back to my home, you'd play it cool a while, then take off and go back home." His amused wince was accompanied by the vicious throwing of a trio of blades of grass, twined together for extra damage.

"I thought I was so cool, so capable of being on my own. Totally figured I'd take William with me when I ran, and we'd go home again, live in Uncle's house, and things'd be the way they were." He was shaking his head at his own naivete, his own self-assurance. "Then, then you brought us here, and I didn't have the least fucking clue about how to get home from here." He made a sound in his throat, something derisive, with traces of the quietly angry, lost boy he'd been.

"So I figured, it'll take longer, but the plan's still going to happen. Just a hitch." Idle hands, he had the same need to be doing something she did. Slowly at first, but with confidence and deft skill, he began plaiting blades of grass together, weaving them through and around each other as he spoke. "Then, one morning when we were Smudging, I saw it. And I couldn't pretend I was still gonna go anymore."

Curious, she tilted her head to the right, an auburn brow lifted in silent question.

He leaned forward, calloused fingers splayed at her jaw, thumb brushing across the upper plane of her cheek just below an amethyst eye.

"I saw just how broken you were inside. Saw the hurt and grief that you kept hidden all the time. Saw that, even with that, even with that much pain inside you, you still loved us. You were still there, and always would be." Dorian's smile, his true smile was a dangerous thing, slow curving as though savoring the very act of movement. Dimples flickered at the edges of it, the only lines on his smooth cheeks. His was the sort of smile that made women, and men, wonder and want. Most women at least, he'd found it never worked on Thorn.

"No one ever had, other than Uncle. Everyone else, they'd get lost in their own pain and anger, and just stay there. You though, you put us first." For a moment, the sixteen year old he'd been showed through, had him dropping his eyes shyly to the side. "I wanted to do everything I could to take that away from you."

Before she could say the words he saw on her face, the ones glazing her eyes with happy-woman-crying tears and making her throat work past the choked-up knot, the smart-ass returned. "Plus, you know, I figured after a while, I'd have a chance to cop a feel or three. Maybe get you into be--." His oh-so innocent smile was quickly hidden under yet another clump of grass and dirt.

The ensuing war of thrown grasses and soft-soft dirt clods was interwoven with laughter and yelps. More than a few curses and the occasional giggling-snort.

She tried. Had been trying. There just wasn't anymore she could do, anymore she could give.

Slow and stately to hide the pull and ache and torment of joints and muscle and bone and tendon, she went to her girl's side. Pressed her shoulder against her thigh and lifted her muzzle into the trembling fingers of her right hand. Feeling them curl around her lower jaw, one more time, made the sun shine brighter, the breezes through the grass and flowers sweeter. Made her decision, all the more difficult.

She sighed, a long, slow thing that nearly emptied her lungs and trembled up her throat in sorrow and regret. In apology. For ten years she'd been at the girl's side in very nearly all things, and when she couldn't be there, she was there later. One of many to curl around the woman and ignore the bitter-salt tears that dripped and tracked and itched as it dried on the skin. Third to stay and wear the clinging drape of arms, tuck her chin around shoulders that shook as sobs wracked her girl in the darkest depths of empty nights. And now second to answer the call that no true mortal could ignore for long.

With nudges and pressure she led the now-woman to the Glade where so many others rested. Only one among them ran on four, soon there'd be another laying cradled in soft earth, covered in flowers that never died, never wilted. Basking eternal in the cool dirt in the Summer Glade where the seasons stood still as tribute to the First in the Earth.

They sat there for a time, the sun moved from its zenith across the sky to lower behind the horizon, the girl cross legged with stroking her head as it rested in her lap. Murmured words of love and encouragement, sorrow and joy. Tales told, memories shared. Good things, bright and warm energy given freely, with a heavy hand as always.

Sleep came, her golden eyes dimmed as her blinking came more often, lasting longer. For a moment, in blink of time, enough energy came for her to lift up, give one last gentle, dignified swipe of her tongue at her girl's jaw, the tight triple curl of her tail wiggled happily. Then her breathing slowed. Slowed. Slowed. Slowed before finally stopping with a sigh.

A small, satisfied smile touched the corners of her mouth on the body she left behind. And though the sobbing, keening wail of her girl gave her pause, made her hesitate, the heavily built brindle male dancing joyous just beyond the edge made her drop chest low, front legs splayed and dash off.

She reveled in it. The storm of Power that raged within her. The blending balance between life and death, creation and destruction. The delicate, ever changing glide between a candle's flame in the darkest night, to the screaming eruption of a wildfire's inferno.

Took joy and pride in coaxing and commanding the floods and trickles as needed. Found satisfaction in learning and mastering the finesse alongside the hammer blows.

And with that torrent roiling at her fingertips, the ever growing depth of her Power pooling, she wove. Knit together fragments of shards, stitched together something from the almost nothing it'd been reduced to. Breathed ever so gently, as one would when making the dearest wish of their heart on the puff of a dandelion

Concentration beetled her brow, effort had sweat slicking her skin. Her eyes nearly crossed more times than she'd have liked to admit, but the vicious headache banding her forehead didn't accept bull shit self deception or pride for payment.

The translucent, very nearly transparent creature resting in her hands, fragile as a puppy's first breath, stirred. Flexed its wing to test the strength of its newly reformed membranes and bones. Its sending of pain and terror had long since quieted, though the apprehensive resignation were still very much in evidence. The animental gave a sigh of relief that bled into a whisper of joy when the healed wing caught the wind and carried it aloft once more.

Without a backward glance the creature of air disappeared into the wild sapphire of the Elemental Plane.

"Well, that was nerve wrackin'." Though the effort had been mainly an exercise of will and magical effort, the redneck knuckled the small of her back and rolled her head on her neck to relieve the tension that had built there.

"Told you you'd do fine." Her cousin Branth smirked at her. Winced when she playfully backhanded him in the chest.

"Right, 'cause tellin' me, while I'm workin' on the critter, that if I'm even half a hair off it'll explode is a great way t'show your faith in me." The roll of her eyes was echoed in her tone of voice.

"But, did anything die?" He cracked up when she flipped him off.