oddess proud.
	Jenna would be ready.  She'd have her powers back in time.  He was certain of it.
	Tarrin looked up the road, then down the road, then up the road again.  It seemed...travelled.  Too travelled.  The road usually didn't see a traveller a ride, but the muddy road had wagon ruts, hoofprints, and bootprints churned into its surface.  Some of those bootprints were too large to be human.  So it was true; Aldreth was under occupation.  That made him a bit wary and fearful, and he was worried at what he might find there.
	But showing up like this was not the smart thing to do.  Absently, Tarrin shifted into his human form, sending his clothes and his sword into the elsewhere, then reached within and Conjured forth suitable plain, nondescript clothing for his human body, in the style common in Aldreth.  The itch of holding the human shape had already started, but it wasn't anything that would become a problem any time soon.  It would be best to drift in looking like a nearby farmer.  Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, feeling a bit weird that it wasn't pressing down on cat ears, Tarrin turned northwest, towards the village that had been his home for seventeen years.
	The rain fizzled out as he turned a slight bend and found himself looking at the village he considered to be home, the village of Aldreth.  A strange tumult of emotions rose up in him, seeing the familiar buildings and houses of his home village, but he did see changes.  Some of the buildings were new, having been built on the foundations of old homes, but two houses that had once been there were gone, with only bare patches of soggy, muddy earth to mark their locations.  One of them was the herbalist's shop and home, the other was the home of Darl Millen and his family, the village wheelright.  The Road's End Inn still stood at the foot of the bridge over Cold Water Creek, but what worried Tarrin was the new, rather large log building that had been built beside it, a building who flew the flag of Daltochan.
	It was a barracks.  Two men stood flanking that door, wrapped in wet cloaks and looking miserable.  Both men were unshaven and slovenly, and their pikes were in bad condition.  Aside from those two men, there was nobody else to be seen, anywhere.  It was almost eerie.
	Tarrin came over the bridge and approached the Road's End Inn.  The door was closed, but there was smoke wafting from the chimney to show him that it was indeed open.  He opened the door and stepped inside, looking into the place and seeing that it had not changed in the slightest since the last time he'd seen it.  It was still an open, bright room with a hearth and fire crackling, and candles hanging from an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling.  There were six tables spread on the floor of the common room, and a low bar with casks of ale and wine behind it on the far wall, beside the door to the kitchen.  Most of those tables were occupied by burly, unkempt men with black hair and bristling beards, wearing rusty chain jacks and splotched tunics under them.  They had the look of Karn Rocksplitter; they were all Dal soldiers.  About twelve of them, and they all looked hung over and unfriendly.
	Wylan Ren was standing behind the bar, a slightly annoyed look on his face.  He looked much thinner than Tarrin remembered, with dark circles under his eyes, and a very pinched mouth that looked out of place on the usually friendly, jovial fellow.  Tarrin couldn't suppress a smile when he saw the man, who had been a friend to the Kael family for as long as Tarrin could remember, and he quickly made his way through the drinking soldiers to come stand in front of the bar.
	"Can I help you, goodman?" Wylan asked in a hollow tone.  Had the occupation taken that much out of the energetic man?
	"I'm sure you could," Tarrin said to him, and that made Wylan's eyes pick up immediately.  Though Tarrin looked more mature than Wylan probably remembered, Tarrin's voice hadn't changed.
	"Tarrin?" he asked in a strangled, low tone.  "Tarrin, is that you?"
	"I'm afraid so," Tarrin grinned at him.
	Wylan grasped his hand strongly and warmly, then reached over the bar and clapped the taller man on the back.  "It's good to see you, my boy!" he said exuberantly, but still in a low tone.  "But--" he looked around.  "But I heard that you were, well, different looking."
	Tarrin smiled ruefully.  Father's letters, he had little doubt.  Father had told the villagers some of what had happened.  "It's true, Wylan," he admitted.  "But I have a few tricks that let me move around without attracting much attention."
	"Regardless of that, it's just so good to see you!" he said happily, motioning for Tarrin to sit at a stool by the bar.  Wylan pulled up a tankard and filled it with ale, then set it in front of him before pulling up the stool he kept behind the bar and sitting down across from him.  "How are your parents?"
	"They're fine, and so is my sister," he replied.  "But what is all this?  What's happened here, Wylan?"
	"What you see, I'm afraid," he sighed.  "We don't have an army, my boy, so when the Dals came, we simply accepted it.  Darl Millen and Lars the herbalist were killed during a nasty confrontation after they took over, and the Goblinoids burned down the houses of the Yeats, the Mikels, and the Longbranches.  Jak is hiding in the forest now because he killed a Dal soldier after they burned down his house, and they retaliated by killing the rest of the family."
	That made Tarrin wince.  The Longbranches were good people.  Myra and Stef Longbranch, the parents, were good-hearted people, and Lili Longbranch was a very cute little girl with a love of butterflies.  Jak was one of Tarrin's few friends, and it hurt him that his friend had had to suffer through the deaths of his family members.  "I'm sorry to hear that, Wylan," Tarrin said sincerely.  "The Longbranches were good people."
	"I know.  Well, they had a large garrison here, but after the Goblinoids started to die off, they moved them out and left about twenty or so men here to enforce their law.  I think the Forest Folk in the Frontier didn't like the beasts so close to their homes, so they came out and killed them off."
	"Probably," Tarrin agreed.  "The Forest Folk really hate Goblinoids."
	"Outside of that, things have been pretty calm," he continued.  "We don't give the soldiers much reason to do anything, and they leave us alone."  He leaned in and whispered.  "I suggest you don't raise too much attention.  You look like a villager, but if these men realize you came from somewhere else, they'll arrest you."
	"They'll try," Tarrin said in a grim tone that made Wylan's eyebrow raise.  "I'm debating what to do about those soldiers before I leave."
	"Just don't cause a scene, lad!" Wylan whispered.  "Any you kill will just be replaced by others, and we'll be the ones to pay for it!"
	"I wouldn't put you in danger, Wylan," Tarrin said calmly.
	"Barkeep!  More ale!" one of the Dal soldiers burst out.
	Wylan gave Tarrin a roll of his eyes, then poured a tankard of ale and scurried out to the Dal soldier and handed it to him.  The man took a drink of it, then spat half of it out onto the table.  "This is swill!" the man said harshly to Wylan.
	"It's all I have left," Wylan said flintily.  "If you men would pay for what you drink, I'd have the money to buy better ale to replace what's gone."  Wylan crossed his arms.  "And when that's gone, I'll have to close the inn.  I'll have nothing left."
	"Stinking backwater," the soldier snorted.  "Why don't they garrison us in Torrian?  They have lots of ale there."
	"Let's just confiscate the goods to run down to Torrian and buy it ourselves," one of the other soldiers suggested with an evil glint in his eye.
	"We get nothing but local slop since the army moved the supply lines from here to moving through Torrian," another soldier complained.  "I'm getting tired of wearing boots with holes in them."
	Tarrin picked up at that.  Moved the supply lines?  Not getting anything?  It sounded like the Dals had written off Aldreth as another conquered village, and its remoteness had caused them to more or less forget about it.  That was something he very much liked to know.  He could very well kill off the Dals and leave Aldreth free, without worrying about them suffering reprisals.
	"If you hadn't have threatened the cobbler, he wouldn't have run off with his family into the forest, Kag," one man told the complainer sourly.  "Then we'd all have new boots."
	Garyth the cobbler, hiding in the forest?  He was the village mayor!
	A plan formed in Tarrin's mind.  Right here, in this room, he had a large block of the Dal occupying force.  If he killed them off, it would be a simple matter to finish off the remainders without too much danger to the village.  Aldreth's remote location had caused the Dals to more or less forget about it, and that would give Tarrin enough time to ensure that they couldn't retake the village, no matter how meny men they had.
	Wylan returned behind the bar and sat back down across from Tarrin.  "I'm surprised you came here first, Tarrin," he said in a low tone.  "Why, we all thought you'd have gone home first, and seen your wife."
	"Wife?" Tarrin said with a scoff.  "Wylan, I doubt I'm ever going to get married."
	"Well, who's that woman that lives out on your old farm, then?" he asked curiously.  "Garyth used to talk to her all the time before he started hiding.  He said that you and her were--well, you were married."
	"Wylan, I seriously doubt that any woman would marry me," Tarrin said with a chuckle.
	"She's--well, she looks alot more like you than you do at the moment," he said delicately, looking at the Dal soldiers again.
	Tarrin's eyes bored into Wylan.  "What do you mean?"
	Giving the soldiers a furtive look, Wylan put his hands on either side of his head and raised two fingers in a crude imitation of cat's ears.
	"She is?  She's living on the farm?"
	Wylan nodded.  "Garyth said she was waiting there for you.  She's been living on the farm, raising her baby.  The soldiers never go out there, and we villagers keep her a secret to make sure she's not hassled."
	Mist?  Could it be Mist?  Mist knew where he had lived beforehand.  "Why would she come out here?" Tarrin said in confusion, mainly to himself.  "She wouldn't bring her son anywhere near a human settlement."
	"Son?  Garyth said she had a girl, not a boy."
	"What?" Tarrin asked, his voice rising a bit higher than was good for him.  "A girl?" he asked in a hissing tone.  "The only woman I know with a child has a boy."
	"She certainly knows you, Tarrin."
	"What does she look like?"
	"She's taller than me, with red hair and white--uh, white hair.  She--"
	Tarrin turned away from him so quickly that he nearly fell over.  Jesmind!  That was Jesmind!  And Jesmind had a daughter!  Why was she here?  What possessed her to go get frisky with another Were-cat and then bring that child onto his farm?  His mother would have an absolute fit!  And that didn't count how it made him feel!
	A whirlwind of emotions rose up in him, memories of Jesmind, of their fights and their intimacy, the longings and the anger he'd felt towards her after they separated.  It all seemed to come crashing down over his head, because now, not three longspans from where he was standing, Jesmind was in his old house, on his old land, raising a baby in a place where it--and she--did not belong.  Tarrin clenched a hand into a fist, so hard that his knuckles turned white, as the anger of feeling betrayed by the woman he once loved nearly overwhelmed his sense of logic, logic that told him to go see Jesmind and find out what was going on before flying off the handle.
	He knew that Jesmind was her own woman, and had the right to dally with any male she chose, but how dare she bring that child back to his home!  It was an outrage!
	"Here now, the young man here looks a tad miffed," one of the Dal soldiers laughed evilly.  "Did your girlfriend throw you out?"
	The gaze Tarrin levelled on that soldier was very nearly inhuman, a look of absolute, utter disregard for the man's life that would have even done Tarrin's Were-cat form proud.
	"It looks like this one has an attitude problem, Gart," another soldier said with an ugly laugh.  "Think we should teach him some manners?"
	"Gentlemen, please," Wylan said quickly.  Wylan fully understood the incredible danger those men were now in, if his father had written anything about Tarrin's change of personality.  "I beg you, not here, not now.  Leave the lad be, he's just received some bad news."
	"Aww, poor little backwater sop," the man that had first spoken to him, a narrow-faced man with pockmarks and a missing front tooth, said with a nasty grin.  "What, your chicken just died?  Or maybe your woman found out what it was like to get it from a real man, eh?"
	That was one remark too many.  With an outraged howl, Tarrin burst through his human clothing as he changed form, returning to his towering, menacing Were-cat body, and then immediately hooked his claws into the offendor before the man could even register that his life was about to end.  With a grasping paw and a quick twist, Tarrin literally tore the man's head off, sending a showering geyser of blood flying from the wrenched neck.  The other men in the inn began screaming in terror and jumping to their feet, but their shock and surprise spelled the end of their lives as the enraged Were-cat tossed the dead body aside and waded into their midst, claws sending blood, flesh, cloth, bits of armor, even wood from tables and chairs flying as he entered a frenzy of absolute destruction.  The terrified screams became wails of the mortally wounded and the dying as Tarrin savaged the entire common room, killing anything he could reach, heading off every man that tried to flee for the door.  The few that did manage to draw weapons and feverishly fight for their lives found that they did absolutely nothing to this nightmare before them, that stabbing the monster only made it that much more angry.
	It was over in a surprisingly short time.  Tarrin stood in the middle of the destroyed common room, standing in the middle of the destruction he had wrought.  He stood on shards of table and chair, on the eviscerated flesh and exposed bone of piles of meat that could no longer be identified as human.  The floor and walls, even the ceiling, were covered in spattered blood and the occasional morsel of flesh that had managed to stick to the whitewashed walls or timber-beamed ceiling.  Panting heavily to regain control of himself, to ease himself out of the rage, the blood-streaked Were-cat closed bloody paws into fists and forced the Cat back into its place within his mind.
	"By Karas!" Wylan managed to squeal, rising up from behind the bar and looking at the destruction wrought in his common room.  "Tarrin, are you alright?"
	"I'm fine, Wylan," Tarrin said in an emotionless tone.  "Sorry about the mess.  I'll clean it up.  I promise."
	"Eron said you--he never said anything about this!"
	"Does it surprise you that he didn't?" Tarrin asked calmly, standing fully erect and feeling himself fully in control.  "I can see it now.  'By the way, Wylan, did I mention that my son is now a homicidal maniac?'"
	Wylan gave him a strangled look, then actually laughed.  "Well, if you say it that way, I can see why," he admitted.  "Are you feeling--"
	The door to the inn opened, and four more Dal soldiers were standing there, looking in with sudden horror and revulsion.  One of them actually turned and vomited.  "Good gods!" another called.  "That thing killed them all!"
	"Get it!" another called, an officer by the looks of him, raising his sword to attack.
	These four lasted little longer than the first twelve, but the only difference was that Tarrin attacked them with a rational mind.  He swatted aside a sword and then casually decapitated the leading attacker, the officer, with a twist of the paw and then a wicked backhanded swipe of his claws.  Before the dead body fell, he had the man behind the first in his clutches, with his claws sank into the man's chest, then picked him up as if he weighed no more then a small dog and hurled him head first into the wall.  The other two men, who had not rushed in to the attack, turned to flee, but Tarrin grabbed both of them by the backs of their chain jacks and hauled them into the inn, picked them up, then smashed their heads together with enough force to break their necks and shatter their skulls.
	That was sixteen.  There could only be four or five more left, and Tarrin wasn't going to leave them around to cause trouble.  "Excuse me a moment, Wylan," Tarrin said politely, then he ducked under the door and left the inn.  He saw that the guards at the door of the barracks were gone, so he let himself in and then stalked through the barracks quietly and deliberately, hunting down the others.  Three he found in their beds, and were dispatched without arousing them from slumber.  Another was found in an office, who looked to be the barracks commander, and he too died without much fuss, though Tarrin had to drag him back in through a window while he screamed and begged for mercy.  The last one was a challenge, for he had been in an outhouse behind the barracks, and had seen the the man Tarrin killed in the office try to escape out the window, so he ran.
	He didn't make it to the edge of the forest.  Tarrin caught up with him, then killed him with a single claw to the back of the neck in mid-stride.
	Using Sorcery to clean the blood off of himself and repair the holes in his clothes, Tarrin returned to the inn and stepped into the carnage.  Wylan still crouched behind the bar, only his eyes and the top of his head visible.  "Sorry about that, Wylan," Tarrin said calmly as the rain began again.  "Let me take care of this."
	Weaving together a flow of Air and Water, Tarrin stripped the bloody mess off the floor and the walls, even the ceiling, then caused it to drift out the door.  He used a weave of Earth to dig out a suitable hole for the mangled refuse, then it was placed inside and buried neatly.  Then he reached within, touching the core of his Druidic power, and Created tables and chairs that resembled the old ones, though they had the look of new furniture rather than the scratched, pitted appearance of the old ones.
	Wylan rose up uncertainly, looking at Tarrin with just a little fear in his eyes.  That stung Tarrin a bit, but he couldn't help it.  It was part of what he was.  "I hope you know that you just made things very uncertain for us, lad," Wylan said soberly.
	"I'll take care of it, Wylan," Tarrin told him.  "Before I leave, I guarantee you that you won't have to worry about another Dal garrison marching up the road."
	"I certainly hope so."  Tarrin turned and walked back out the door.  "Where are you going, lad?"
	"To evict someone," he answered in a very ugly tone, a red haze building up behind his eyes.
	The villagers were coming out of their houses.  He recognized all of them, but he didn't reply to their calls, didn't wave to them as he marched resolutely towards the overgrown road that would take him to his farm, his home.  He was going to deal with Jesmind, one way or another.  The idea that she had usurped his home violated him to the core, even more so with the thought that she had brought with her a child that had no more of a place there than she did.  He wasn't jealous of that--not too jealous, anyway--but the thought of his home being violated by an outsider overwhelmed any logical reasons as to why she chose that place to live.
	The villagers recognized him, but instead of following after him, they approached the inn, where Wylan had come out and was calling to the others, keeping them from following the outraged Were-cat.
	They didn't want to see what could very well happen on the old Kael farm.

	Step, step step.
	The sound of his footsteps mixed with the sound of the halting rain, sounds of raindrops hitting newly grown leaves, hitting the ground, hitting him.  He'd lost the cloak somewhere--he couldn't remember where or how--and he was too mad to think to summon it back, so he had marched off in the rain.  He was more or less soaked now, which made him that much more angry at being wet.  Those sounds seemed distant to him as he made the last turn and found himself looking on the land he had called home all his life, still called home, a land that no longer looked as he remembered it.
	The house was still there, but the large barn and the brewhouse were collapsing in on themselves.  The house had been recently painted, a dark brown color much like wood itself, and the smaller barn showed signs of recent repair.  There was a hoed patch of ground where the chickens used to scratch in the farmyard, what looked to be a garden.  The place looked empty, somehow, without animals or sounds or activity.  It almost looked abandoned.  But there was smoke rising from the chimney, a sure sign that the house was occupied.
	That caused him to come up short.  Jesmind was in that house.  He was very angry with the thought of her living there, of her bringing a child into his home, but fonder memories of Jesmind competed with those angry mentations and reminded him that he still cared for her.  He was mad at her, but he still cared for her.  Maybe instead of breaking down the door and proceeding to chastise his old flame, he should give her the chance to explain.
	I've tried to kill my own mother, and I meant it at the time, Jesmind had told him once, long ago.  He knew exactly how she had felt right at that moment.  Part of him wanted to strangle her, and the other part wanted to find out why she was here.
	Either way, he wasn't getting any answers standing in a soggy barnyard staring at the house.  Taking a cleansing breath, trying to calm down to the point where he'd give Jesmind a chance to explain, he started towards the house again.
	He reached the inner edge of what he had always called the yard, about fifty spans from the porch, when the front door opened.  He couldn't see inside because the front of the house faced to his left, but he did see someone come out.  He kept coming forward as a small figure exited the house holding a small basket in its hands, but as the figure turned, he saw that it had a tail.
	The figure was that of a little girl, probably about six, who skipped down the steps of the porch lightly.  She had the white fur of her mother, but had strawberry blond hair instead of red, tied into a single tail behind her.  She wore a little half-shirt that left her belly bare and a pair of rugged leather breeches, undyed, with shredded cuffs around her ankles from her claws.  "Five minutes!" Jesmind's booming voice called from inside.  "If you're not back by then, I'll tan your hide, young lady!"
	"I'll hurry, mama!" the little girl called back.
	Who was this?  This was no baby!  This was a six year old girl!  Had Jesmind had this girl before she met him, and had broken off from raising this baby girl to take care of him?  Was she the reason Jesmind had left him?  Tarrin stopped where he was and tried to make sense of it all.  Why hadn't she told him about this?  She would have.  She should have.  There was no reason to keep this girl a secret from him.  It made no sense!
	The little girl looked in his direction, then stopped dead in her tracks.  She was an adorably lovely little girl, with her mother's beauty written all over her face.  She had pattern green eyes, common for a Were-cat, a cute little nose and high cheeks that made her absolutely adorable.  She looked at him for a long moment, her expression serious and sober, and then she smiled at him, showing tiny little fangs.  She dropped the basket and ambled towards him with surprising speed and dexterity for such a young child, holding out her arms to him.
	He didn't quite know what to do.  Why was she running towards him?  She didn't know him. Jesmind should have taught her that it was a very bad idea to be so friendly to strangers, even other Were-cats.
	She got closer and closer, and as she did so, the sense of her assaulted him, smashed at him with its force, almost overwhelmed him.  Such power!  This little girl, untapped, had the potential to be a Sorcerer that would even eclipse him!  Her power was unbelievable!
	The gift of Sorcery has been introduced into the Were-cat line, the Goddess had told him.  Through you.  Your children will have the gift.
	Your children.
	Children. Not child, but children.
	Tarrin felt his knees give out from under him, and he dropped to them in the soggy ground as the little girl rushed towards him exuberantly, crying out a single word that seemed to drown out all sound throughout the world.
	"Papa!"
	She hugged him happily around his neck, holding onto him and laughing, but he did not respond.  He couldn't understand it.  It was true, it was true; this little girl was his daughter.  But she was too old!  She had to be five or six, yet he'd only met Jesmind two years ago!  His mind reeled from it, couldn't rationalize it, couldn't understand what had happened, make sense of it all.
	He grabbed the little girl and pushed her away, looked into her eyes.  There was no denying it.  This girl was his daughter.  She was his child.  She looked at him with adoring eyes, smiling brightly.  "Aren't you happy to see me, papa?" she asked in a bubbling voice.  "Mama said if we waited long enough, you'd come home!"
	Mama.  Jesmind.  Tarrin's eyes turned flat, startling the little girl, and he pushed her away just enough to return to his feet, towering over the little girl.  "Jesmind," Tarrin hissed seethingly.  "Jezzzz-MIND!" he rose to a shout, his ears laying back.
	She appeared on the porch, and his entire world seemed to spin at the sight of her.  She looked just as he remembered.  She wore a plain cotton shirt and a pair of those canvas breeches she favored, and her expression both happy and fearful.  She saw the girl standing in front of him, and that made her eyes very worried.  Obviously, it looked that she would have preferred breaking this herself.
	Passing the little girl by, Tarrin marched deliberately towards the house, claws flexing and murder twisting his features.  He had passed angry some ten paces ago.  He was absolutely, utterly, and thoroughly furious.  But it wasn't the hot, blinding rage of the Cat, it was the cold, calculating anger of the Human, a Human that could not fathom what was going on, and was intent on getting answers.  And getting them right now.  Jesmind gripped the door nervously, waiting for him to reach her, and not looking too happy to see him.  He came up the steps, marched right across the porch, then grabbed her by the arms and stared down at her with righteous indignation.
	"Would you mind telling me what in the nine hells is going on around here?" he demanded hotly, gripping her so hard that his claws drew blood.
	"I'd think that it's fairly obvious," she said weakly, trying to look bold, but Tarrin's newfound size and height seemed to have her off guard.  She looked up at him with the questions dancing in her eyes, but he would have none of her distractions.  "Tarrin, I'd like you to meet your daughter, Jasana."
	"Daughter?  Daughter?  Why didn't you tell me?  Why didn't you have Triana tell me!"
	"I told Mother to keep it secret," she replied with a calm that pure bravado.  "I didn't want you to get distracted from what you were doing.  I didn't want to put you in danger."
	"I wasn't doing anything when you left me!"  His eyes widened.  "You left me because you were pregnant!" he gasped in understanding.  "You knew, and you wouldn't tell me!"  He picked her up off the porch by her arms and pulled her up nose to nose with him.  "Why?  For the Goddess' sake, why?"
	"Because of this!" she snapped at him, pushing him away enough to put her feet back on the porch.  "I knew you'd overreact!  That you wouldn't understand!  I didn't know if you'd survive, or what would happen to you!  I didn't want you to worry about me or our child, because I knew the Human in you wouldn't allow you to let me go if you knew!"
	Her logic assaulted his anger.  That much made sense.  When she left him, he was still a Rogue, and his future was very much in question.  And she was right again.  If he'd have known she was with child back then, he would have put both paws on her and made her stay with him.  That would have endangered the baby.
	But logic had little to do with anger.  He felt betrayed by her leaving him without telling him, no matter what her reasoning was.  He was about to go off on her, but a small paw grabbed him by the end of his lashing tail and held firm.  Tarrin turned and looked down, to see Jasana, her eyes teary, staring up at him with a heartbreaking expression.  "You're not happy to see me?" she asked in a small voice.
	Tarrin had experienced any number of raw emotions in his lifetime, but the emotions that flared up in him at seeing that little girl looking up at him with those heartbreaking eyes was simply too much for his anger to bear, and was some of the most intense and soul-piercing emotions he had ever felt in his life.  His anger was shattered by those eyes, causing him to remember that this was his child, this was his daughter, and he had been inhumanly cruel not to acknowledge her, not to even say hello to her.  She had greeted him with such exuberant love, and he had tossed her aside like so much garbage.  Guilt over his actions rocked him to his foundations, and it was suddenly replaced by the instinctive needs that went along with being a parent.  He felt the need to comfort the girl, to make her feel better, and the acknowledgement inside him that this was indeed his little girl caused the same powerful feelings of love to arise in him as existed for the rest of his family.  This little girl was his family, his child, and he would not deny her.
	He knelt down and put his paw on her shoulder gently, though it was too large to fit.  "I'm very happy to see you, Jasana," he told her with exquisite tenderness.  "I was just very surprised to see you, that's all.  I'm afraid I don't take surprises very well."
	"Papa!" the little girl said quickly, then threw her arms around his neck and hugged him with surprising strength.  Tarrin stood up with the little girl in his arms, nuzzling her, taking in her scent and branding it forever in his memory, the knowledge that he had another child, a daughter, threa