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Odessa blinked up at him, the way a lamb might look at a wolf— wide-eyed and unsteady, but too stunned to run.

Mythris… she repeated softly, tasting the word as if it might tell her something, might make sense of the impossible. It didn’t. It only sounded foreign and strange on her tongue.

Her gaze drifted again over the red stains on his chest when he said he’d been hunting. Something about the way he said it made her chest tighten — not fear exactly, but a strange kind of ache, like a warning in her bones. Still, she forced a small, fragile nod. Hunting, she murmured, half to herself. Right.

He gave his name and she hesitated before offering her own. Odessa. It came out quiet, nearly swallowed by the breeze that brushed through the purple flowers around them. I… I think I was human, before, she admitted after a moment, her voice small and cracked with disbelief. And then— she stopped herself, shaking her head as though it might wake her from the dream.

Her eyes flicked back to his, the faintest tremor of curiosity breaking through her sorrow. You live here? In this… Mythris? She stepped closer, just one step, with her ears still pinned but her tail tucked low in uncertain politeness. It’s beautiful, she whispered, glancing at the lilac blooms he’d trampled through. Everything just feels… wrong here.

She paused, searching his face again, her lilac eyes shimmering with an uneasy hope. I don’t mean to be a burden. I just—don’t know where to go. Or what I’m supposed to do now.

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