Lasika sighed again as she slung her bow over her shoulder. The walls shuddered, planks groaning as snow pummeled the hut high in the treetops, on the outskirts of Silverclaw Hub. She strapped her thrusting blade in position against her thigh, pulled her skirt down to conceal it, and checked herself in the mirror one last time, her one eye darting back and forth over her reflection, trying to spot what she had forgotten.

Right. Sweater and coat. Probably shouldn't return to adventuring half naked. Probably.

She sighed again.

Merelew. After all this time, it was starting to happen. Years of peace with the ocean-folk, and it could all be crumbling away. Well, that's what she had to find out.

She slipped out of the hut, huddled inside her coat, beret pulled down far enough to tuck her ears into it, and crept along the swaying bridge between the platforms that connected the Hub together. In one of the bigger structures, some of the older kits were sitting in a circle, engaged in a lecture with an elder. Lasika watched her daughter from the doorway for a moment.

The young kit had an ear quirked toward the teacher, but was otherwise engaged with some puzzle toy of interlocking rings. The two Dozypaws males, Misu and Moonshine, flanked her, both engrossed in the lecture.

Lasika rubbed at her eye, then her nose, scratching the itch that always bubbled up when her nerves started to fray.

It was a nice place, Silverclaw Hub. It had nice people in it. But they weren't hers. That wasn't her daughter in there, those weren't the children of her lovers. This wasn't her world. She'd let that fact slide over her life for years, letting herself forget. But now the mission called her back.

The picture flashed across her mind again. Lucia's face peeling away, fur blistering into scales, fangs elongating, her neck pulsing as gills and fins flared out. When had it happened, her child's soul ripped away, her skin repurposed for this slithering sea spawn? It had curled up against her, purred happy bliss at her, mewled awkward, infantile phrases in her people's tongue, but it had not been her Lucia, not for some time. How could she have let her guard down?

And when she had left the thing there under lock and key in the Hub, and ventured out, she had discovered the rest of the world had been taken at last. Every last person. Dripping, slithering, the bank tellers, the guild leaders, the urchins in the streets, and the pouring rain, relentless for weeks, keeping them alive in other people's lives. All pretending, but for who? For the last ones left. For her.

She'd ran, swam, climbed back to the Hub - all for naught. Her absence had been their victory. There were only a few left, hidden away just outside the Hub, as she'd told them to do. She'd taken them, led them to her safe spot buried deep in the woods further to the south, away from the Forest of the Night and its ages old curse.

And then years had passed, the three of them alone, pouring over magic with no guidance, no oversight, no idea what they were doing. And they found a way to open a rift, just like the moon mages had done. A rift not between planes, but worlds. And she had gone through, stepping back through the years, into a life almost, but not quite, exactly like her own, at the moment the gods had accepted the other her back to the Wheel at last.

She'd buried herself, no one the wiser. To them, she was the same Lasika. She'd stolen her life, just as the Merelew had stolen everyone she had ever known. It made her sick.

But this was the plan. This was the reason, right now - this sighting at the moon mage's meeting. It was the first in a long while, outside of the river Elves' trading. This world had been spared. The prayers had turned the Kraken back to the ocean, the rains had ceased, and whatever other troubles still haunted the lands, the Merelew had stayed in the water. All the other pieces of the puzzle faded away, their connections withering and breaking. Sure, there was still the acceptance of necromancy, still the slack-jawed geologists and their rock piles, still the faerie dust drifting in the breeze, glittering in the dappled light of the forests, still Ocular roaming in far off lands.

But it didn't fit anymore. She could see the gaps where each thing was its own thing, unconnected. No grand conspiracy, no master plan, nothing working together.

It could, though. It could fit again, if they were going to try it again. They only had to look at the parts they had availble to them, and build it as it had been in her world. Years late, but the same story.

She couldn't let it end the same.

She told no one when she left. She'd said her goodbyes a lifetime ago. She simply faded into the howling storm, heading north to River Crossings.