th it.  There are some things, cub, that you can never live with.  Trust me.  I know."
	"I always trust you, Papa," she said with innocent confidence.
	"Then start listening to me.  I'm not telling you things just to irritate you, cub.  I'm speaking from experience.  I don't want you to have to learn these lessons the same way I did.  I don't want to see you saddled with that kind of pain, see it change you like it did me and Mist.  You don't have to look far to see it, Jasana.  Just look into Mist's eyes the next time you forget what it can be like to live with such pain."
	She was silent a long moment, her tiny little claws kneading against his skin rhythmically.  "I will," she finally said.
	Perfectly played, my child, Fara'Nae's voice touched him.  Perfectly played.
	Tarrin didn't respond to that.  He wasn't trying to manipulate his daughter, he was trying to help make her see the truth Fara'Nae had laid out before her.
	But her commendation did bring him some hope in one regard; it told him that finally, Jasana was starting to understand the danger she posed because of her behavior.  The episode with turning him Were hadn't worked because nothing negative came about because of it, at least to her.  This time, this time something very bad happened, but something that could have been much worse.
	As Fara'Nae said, it was the object lesson Jasana needed to learn from her mistakes.
	He doubted it was going to radically change her.  Jasana was too stubborn for that.  But he hoped that it would teach her that there was such a thing as going too far.  He could endure her scheming nature so long as she realized that there was a place that she'd better not go.
	Tarrin held her for a little while longer, time passed in silence, and then he patted her on her back.  "Come on, cub.  Allia's probably wondering what happened to you, and it's time for breakfast."
	Sniffling a little bit, Jasana pulled away from him, frantically scrubbing at her face with the backs of her white-furred paws.  "I am a little hungry," she admitted.  "I just hope they don't have any more of that disgusting lizard meat."
	"I think there's some sukk left over from last night," he assured her.
	He carried her back to the camp, not quite willing to let go of her yet.  She'd had her punishment, and now it was time to remind her that she was indeed loved.  He wondered absently what Fara'Nae had done, what she had showed her, but in another way, he was glad he didn't know.  He knew it had to have been rather severe.  He remembered his own education in that regard, and it still made him shiver from time to time in the dark of night.
	Allia and Allyn showed constraint when they returned to their tent, and Tarrin hugged his son briefly before they ate breakfast.  Allia gave them a breakfast of sukk eggs and the oddly tasty flatbread that the Selani made out of a grain that grew wild in certain parts of the desert, a bread that had a slightly nutty taste.  The only milk-giving animals the Selani kept were goats, and Allia's tribe didn't have any, so there was no milk, cheese, or butter.  Why they didn't have any was a mystery to Tarrin, but they didn't.  So where most races used bread and cheese as a staple, the Selani used bread and meat.  There was anything if not an abundance of meat roaming around on the blistering plains of the Desert of Swirling Sands.
	Surprising that what most considered a barren wasteland was actually a teeming ecosystem with a surprising abundance of life.  The only thing thats made life harsh were the temperatures and the fact that one had to dig for water.  And the predators, but that was a different issue, for they had nothing to do with the environment.  It was strange also to think that this entire area used to be a lush grassland, much like the fertile plains where the Free Duchies had their city-states.  But the Blood War had changed that.
	If anything was a good indication of the almost apocolyptic nature of the Blood War, that was it.  It was a war that not only wiped out entire races, it laid waste to the very land itself, leaving behind gaping wounds that would never heal.
	"I know that you're done with the sukk, brother," Allia told him.  "What do you intend to do now?"
	"I'm stuck here at least until tomorrow," he told her.  "There's somebody coming to see us."
	"Who?"
	He looked around at them.  "This can't leave this tent," he warned.  "But Sapphire is on her way here."
	Allyn's eyes widened, and Allia laughed lightly.  "We should warn my father," she said.
	He shook his head.  "She told me not to," he warned.  "I think she wants to see how the Selani are going to react."  He looked to Allia.  "Have the Selani seen any dragons?"
	She nodded.  "Not our tribe, but two other tribes of our clan have.  They're from our legends, so legend tells us not to bother them.  We avoid them when we see them."
	"Well, they're about to get a legend right in their faces," he said bluntly.
	"Sapphire is coming!" Eron said with excitement.  They knew she was a dragon, and they also knew that she liked to dote on Tarrin's children, and both of his older children were very fond of her.  She would even perform magic for them, to both educate and entertain, starting them on the path of the magic-user by piquing their curiosity about it.
	"Not a word, cub," Tarrin told him quickly and firmly, thrusting a clawed finger in his face.  "If I find out you told someone, I'll take you home and let Mist tan your hide."
	"I won't tell a soul, Papa!" he said quickly.
	Jasana yawned broadly, her ears laying back reflexively as she showed off her impressive fangs.  "I think I'm going to go to sleep," she said wearily, leaning up against her father.
	--She didn't sleep at all last night,-- Allia informed him, using the Selani hand code.  --All she did was cry.--
	"That's fine," he told her mildly, while giving a knowing nod to Allia.  "Are you still hungry?"
	"No," she replied in a little-girl voice.  "I just want to go to sleep, that's all."
	"Then off with you, cub," he told her.  "We'll clear out so nobody bothers you."  Tarrin tucked his daughter in quite tenderly on one of the soft mats, and she fell asleep almost instantly.  The adults all looked at each other briefly, then they slipped out of the tent with a stealth that only Were-cats and Selani could achieve.
	Allyn had to bow out from them as soon as they left the tent, as he had certain duties to accomplish, which generally entailed working with Selani to come to understand how things worked around the camp.  It looked like he was going to be working with the shepards for a while, probably to be educated about the behavior and activity of the sukk.  That was something that he had to know, for everyone took their turn watching the flocks, even Kallan.  Tarrin only managed to reign in Eron for about ten minutes before he could simply no longer contain himself, and went careening around the camp, asking everyone questions.  Tarrin and Allia walked aimlessly about the camp, and they talked.  Tarrin listened as Allia told him, in some detail, everything that had happened since they'd come back to the desert, about the resistance that Allyn had encountered from the camp, and the general disapproval she had received from her father over Allyn and Kedaira.  Allia hadn't had a very easy time of it, but he knew his sister, and her resolve was absolute.  She loved Allyn, and she wasn't about to give him up for anything.  The other members of the tribe probably didn't understand how much she loved the Sha'Kar, because she was much more reserved out in public than she was in private.  She was much more open here with the Selani, he'd seen, but she was still somewhat reserved because she had the honor of her father to maintain.  That meant that she had to be a proper and respectable daughter.  That, probably, was the core of the problem, he mused.  Since Allia was next in line for her father's position, they didn't want a future leader to be married to an outlander, even if he was related by blood to the Selani.  He wasn't a brother, he was more like a cousin.  Then again, if Allyn wasn't so radically different from the Selani, they may have accepted him a bit better.  A pacifist who relied on his magical powers and was openly soft was an anathema to the Selani.
	Perhaps not just that, he pondered.  Maybe it was the entire situation.  Allia wasn't so, wild, before she left for the Tower.  Maybe they felt that Allia had changed too much while she was out among the outlanders, probably the first Selani to spend so much continuous time away from the desert.  Maybe they were worried that she had changed, and their resistance to her husband and pet were just the first signs of it.  They would probably say something about Tarrin as well, but Tarrin had brands, and that made him untouchable in their eyes.  They were a symbol of acceptance from Fara'Nae, not the Selani, and since he was favored in the eyes of their goddess, they wouldn't dare doubt her wisdom in accepting him.  As he thought before, it all came down to getting brands on Allyn.  Once he had good brands, all this flap would vanish.  Allia's doubtful judgement at accepting him would become mysterious wisdom in seeing his potential, and her taking of Kedaira of a pet would be forgotten, since Tarrin had straightened all of that out.  Once Allyn was branded and she'd been home a few years, things would return to something approaching normal.
	That didn't concern Tarrin too much.  Allyn was utterly smitten with Allia, and he would walk through fire if that was what it took to stay with her.  That was what made them such a good match.  They were very different from one another, but they shared an intense love that would conquer all of their other little problems.  With a little prodding here and there from certain involved parties, if it became necessary, but it probably woudn't be so.  Allyn would not give up, and the Selani, no matter how much they hated him, would respect him for that tenacity.  Allyn would show them a tremendous amount of fortitude and determination, and those would help them accept the Sha'Kar as he became more and more educated about the Selani and his place among them.  He'd only been with them six months, and it was a nod to his intelligence that he had come that far in such a short time.  He was trying to learn an entire culture, and a very complicated one at that.  The Selani only seemed simple and direct people.  Their culture was based on one concept, honor, but things got very complicated after looking past that singular concept and one delved into the operation of Selani society.  Much like the Sha'Kar language had multiple levels and forms, the Selani were similarly layered, where personality and motivation and ambition interacted with the need for honor in amazingly subtle ways.  Status was everything to the Selani, just as it was to the Wikuni and Sha'Kar, their blood-relatives, and what went on concerning one's status was one of the things that made things tricky.  Honor had to be given in the eyes of others, though one could easily lose honor by one's own feelings about the subject.  Many Selani took honor from themselves for mistakes made when they were the only witnesses.  So, the need for community approval made Selani society remarkably complex.  For within the community, one had to remember that every member of it was him or herself an individual.
	He'd learned that lesson from Var and Denai.  They were both Selani, and were strictly faithful to its society.  But that common interest was just about the only thing they shared.  Var was cautious, careful, sensible, and very logical.  Denai was a wild girl, given to rash, impulsive decisions and possessing of a fiery nature that seemed quite un-Selani.  But her belief in the Selani culture made her just as Selani as Var, and to an outsider, they would seem to be quite similar to one another.
	After a little while, they were joined by Kallan and Kaira.  Tarrin and Allia slowed down a bit to allow Allia's mother to keep up, and he was reminded again at the wide variations in Selani.  Kaira was another of those strange Selani that didn't seem very Selani, but was in fact Selani to the roots of her hair and the tips of her fingers and toes.  She was a delightfully upbeat woman, always quick to smile or laugh, which were both unusual given that Selani saw it to be unseemly to smile or laugh in the face of those not close friends, but her infectiously positive nature seemed to override Selani custom.  That, or her extroverted personality made everyone seem to be a friend to her, in which case her public displays of smiles and laughing wouldn't be seen as insulting.  It seemed that Kaira was an exception to that rule, much as Denai was an exception to the rule that Selani weren't crazy.  Her husband Kallan, on the other hand, was the absolute picture of a proper clan-king.  He was almost stiffly proper at all times, haughty in his own way, and he wore an expression of grave alertness, a kind of grim watchfulness one might expect from a ruler always looking for problems or trouble that would inconvenience his people.  From what he'd seen, Kallan was an outstanding clan-king, intensely loyal to his people and doing whatever it took to resolve disputes and move his clan towards prosperity.  He took personal responsibility for the welfare of everyone under him, and that made him quite approachable by the rest of the clan.
	They walked and talked of little things, as Allia's parents continued in quietly grilling him about his own family and getting his point of view of things that their daughter had told them, as well as delicately not asking about what had happened last night.  Tarrin saw that their questions were keenly to the point, displaying their intelligence at seeing to the heart of the matter and asking him only questions that really mattered.  He didn't choose his words when he answered those questions, he gave them the full, blunt truth, even when it hurt his position in their eyes, and let them draw their own conclusions.
	They reciprocated, up to a point, describing the daily life of the tribe from a mundane point of view, which Tarrin rather enjoyed.  He knew a great deal about that from his many talks with Allia, but hearing them again from a different point of view put a new perspective on things.  It also showed him that Kallan treated Kaila with a great deal of deference, obviously impressed by her quick mind and willing to listen to her advice.
	It went beyond that, he saw as they walked along.  Kallan was...protective of her.  He watched him, watched how he acted around her, and realized that it was so.  And that answered his question.  The Holy Mother had yet to heal Kaila because she wanted to teach Kallan a lesson about independence.  Kaila was injured, but she was still more than capable of handling herself.  Kallan didn't seem to want to think that she was capable of living without his attention and aid.  The only thing she needed help with was keeping up with the tribe while it was on the move.  For everything else, she was probably just as capable as any other Selani, even if she only had one eye and one hand.  But Kallan could not see that, or maybe he didn't want to see it.  He hovered over her, trying to coddle her, doing things for her that she was more than capable of doing herself.  Kaila seemed a little exasperated with her husband for his behavior, but didn't actively stop him or chide him for it.  She probably didn't want to bring any dishonor to him by calling him down, even in private.  So she simply endured it and waited for him to see what others had probably known all along.
	Well, there was a way to deal with that.  It wasn't exactly interfering, so he didn't feel that he shouldn't put his paw in.
	"I'm afraid I have some things to do," Kallan sighed, looking at them.  "Let me help you, my wife," he said, offering his arm to her.
	"I think I'll borrow Kaila for a while, kirza," Tarrin said, putting a paw on her shoulder.  "If that's alright with you."
	"What did you have in mind, Tarrin?" she asked, looking up at him with her single eye.
	"Well, I have some more questions, and Allia and Kallan are going to be busy," he shrugged.  "Besides, I'd like to get to know my deshaida's parents better."
	"Well, you have my consent, but do be careful," he said sternly.  "In her condition--"
	Tarrin snorted in a manner that no human or Selani could, giving Kallan an absent, almost irreverent glance.  "Her only condition is having too much patience," he retorted, then he gave a short swear.  "I knew I should have put a leash on that cub!" he announced, looking to where Eron had his entire arm, up to the shoulder, down a hole just on the edge of the camp.  There was no telling what kind of poisonous beastie he was trying to fish out of that hole.
	"Eron!" Tarrin barked, rushing over towards his cub.  "Let go of it right now!"
	He missed the sudden hot look Kallan gave his back, as well as Kaila's speculative pursed lips and Allia's slight, knowing smile.
	By the time he got to the hole, Eron had already pulled out his paw, and it wasn't holding a poisonous critter, as he had feared.  Instead, it was holding a very, very small, very very thin and bedraggled mammal of some sort.  It had the same markings as a jackal, but had a much narrower muzzle and larger, triangular ears.  It was obviously only a baby, but it was shaking and jerking about in a manner that hinted that it was ill.
	"What is it, Papa?" Eron asked breathlessly, holding up the weak little animal.  Tarrin looked at it more closely, and saw that it wasn't a jackal.  It didn't smell like a canine...its scent was more vulpine than canine.  It was some breed of fox, one he'd never seen before.
	"It's a desert fox," Kaila said as she managed to reach them.  "Looks like a kit.  Probably abandoned."
	"Why would its mama abandon it?"
	"She may have been killed, child," she said simply.  "Or forced away.  Or the kit could be sick.  Fox mothers won't raise a kit if they think it's got a disease."
	Eron frowned, looking at the palsied baby with strange intensity.  Its head shook awkwardly, as it seemed to try to yip at Eron, its paws wobbling as it tried to struggle in his grasp.  Tarrin looked closer and saw that it did have fox-like markings, but where a forest fox would be silver or red, this was had a tawny kind of mottled coat, camoflauge in the desert, similar to a jackal, complete with dark stripes down each of its flanks.  Its underbelly was white, and the tips of its tufted, large ears and its bushy tail were black, just like a red fox.  Tarrin looked at it and realized that it was terrified at being in the clutches of what it considered to be a large predator, but he also saw that its palsied shaking was not natural.
	"It's sick," Tarrin concluded, looking at it.  "You'd better put it back in the hole, cub."
	"No!" he said with sudden intensity.  "If it's sick, then you should heal it, Papa!"
	"I can't do that, cub," he sighed.  "I can't heal sickness.  Only a Priest can do that.  It's beyond my power, as both a Sorcerer and a Druid.  Only Priests can cure sickness."
	"Then let's take it to the Priestess," he declared.
	"She wouldn't heal it, cubling," Kaila said gently.  "It's against the course of nature.  It's not our place to interfere with what the Holy Mother has decreed should come to pass."
	"Then she's mean!" he declared vehemently.
	"Eron, calm down," Tarrin said soothingly.  "Don't get worked up.  You've been taught about things like this, cub.  It's best for everyone involved if you just put the animal back where you found it.  There's nothing we can do for it."
	"There is!" he shouted.  "I know you can heal it, Papa!  You can do anything!"
	Tarrin was a bit at a loss here.  "Eron, I'm not that powerful," he said with a bit of irritation.  "Sorcery can't cure diseases, and neither can Druidic magic.  It's just beyond us."
	"You haven't even tried!" he accused, holding the shaking fox kit towards Tarrin aggressively.
	Giving his cub a stern look, he pushed on Eron's arm until the cub was forced to put the infant fox on the ground.  It really was a pathetic-looking thing, all bedraggled and dirty, nothing but skin and bones and trying to get up, but its uncontrollable shaking made that quite impossible.  Tarrin couldn't see why Eron would get so worked up over it.  Eron was a Were-cat, and he understood that sometimes, they just had to let nature do what nature did.  The baby fox was obviously very sick, and it would be best for everyone involved if it were simply allowed to pass away.  It would be impossible for it to live like it was, and it would be better for it to die in peace rather than slowly starve to death, as it had obviously been doing.
	Curious, though, that no matter how obviously sick the little animal was, it was still trying to get up.  It was a spunky little thing, Tarrin had to give it that.
	Tarrin looked at his cub, and saw a steely determination there that he had never seen before.  What had gotten up Eron's shirt about this little fox?  For the first time, Tarrin saw something of Mist in their son.  Mist shared that dogged, iron-willed determination he could see in Eron's eyes.  He knew that no amount of arguing, persuading, or even ordering was going to change Eron's mind about this.
	"Alright, cub, I'll try," he acceded.  "But we both agree right here and now that if I can't do anything for it, you don't protest when I put it back."  Where he could silently and painlessly put the little animal out of its misery, where Eron wouldn't see it.  He didn't want the little baby fox to suffer any more than it obviously had.  It would be more humane to kill it, and least if he did it, it would be quick, painless, and the fox would be at peace.
	"That's fine, Papa, because I know you can heal it.  You can do anything," he stated quite confidently, sitting down cross-legged and wrapping his little black tail around his legs.
	Tarrin knelt and put his paw over the fox kit, who gave a discordant yipping cry and tried to struggle out from under his paw, but simply couldn't overcome its shaking.  Tarrin had seen palsy before, but never as aggravated or as severe as he'd seen it in this little animal.  "Stop it," he said irritably, which startled the fox kit so much it actualy subsided, as Tarrin had addressed it in a manner it could understand.  It still wobbled and convulsed uncontrollably, but it wasn't as aggravated as it had been before.  Obviously, if the kit was trying to move, its palsy was amplified by the attempt.
	Setting his will against the Weave, he spun out a weave of healing, a spell that sent fingers of probing flows into the fox kit and assessed its physical condition.  The poor thing was starved, cannibalizing its own muscle tissue in order to provide the energy to keep itself alive, and severely dehydrated.  If Eron hadn't found it, it would have been dead by sundown.  Tarrin looked beyond its physical state, searching deep into it in order to try to figure out what had caused its shaking sickness, so he'd know whether or not he could do anything about it.
	Deeper and deeper he delved into the little fox's body, until he was in tune with the very way its brain and nervous system operated...and that was where the problem was.  The commands the kit's brain were trying to send to its muscles were getting messed up along the way, somehow.  Tarrin looked through its nervous system again, saw that the brain seemed to be working the right way, but what was getting out of its spine was a garbled mess.  He backtracked, observing the problem, going up its spinal cord, until he found himself again in the little fox's brain.  Something about its brain was causing the instructions to become garbled, even though the commands were being created properly.  He searched again, and again, then one more time, a little annoyed that he couldn't find the problem.  But one thing was for sure, it wasn't being caused by a disease.  This was some kind of defect or disorder, something that he actually could fix.  Sorcery couldn't cure diseases, but this wasn't exactly a disease.  It was a condition, and if he could find what was causing it, he could correct the problem.
	He concentrated his attention to where the spinal cord connected to the brain, then worked backwards.  He moved carefully and slowly, observing everything that was going on, doing his best to exclude autonomic operations such as breathing.  That was a clue, he realized.  The animal's autonomic functions were working properly, it was just motor control that was being affected.
	It took him almost ten minutes before he found the problem, a mass of malformed brain matter that was standing between the fox's motor control area of the brain and the brain stem, a very small area in a very small animal.  He'd simply overlooked it the last three times he looked, because it was so small.  Those impulses had to pass through this defective brain mass, and that was where the signals were getting garbled.  A tumor of some kind, but not a malignant one.
	Easily corrected.
	Weaving flows of Earth, Water, and Divine, the flows of healing, Tarrin snapped them down and released them into the fox's body, right into its brain.  The weave was one of exceeding precision, and it performed its assigned task with the careful precision of a blacksmith etching designs onto a masterpiece.  The rest of the fox's brain wasn't even touched by the weave as it did its work, attacking the malformed brain matter and breaking it down, the reassembling it to resemble the healthy tissue surrounding it.
	The fox seemed to shudder as the spell did its work, then its palsied shaking stopped.  Tarrin carefully looked over the work of his spell, making sure that the healed area was indeed healthy and operating as it should, and he was satisfied with the result.  The abnormality was corrected, and it should stop the palsy from which the fox kit was suffering.
	Tarrin blinked, and then calmly pulled his paw away.  The fox kit was laying there, perfectly still, panting a bit.  It wasn't shaking.  It then started moving, putting its paws under it, then started slinking towards the hole, giving yip-like growls in the direction of the two Were-cats and the Selani, trying to bluff its way to the safety of its hole.
	"You did it, Papa!" Eron announced happily, reaching down and snatching up the little fox kit, which growled threateningly and tried to bite Eron, which the cub completely ignored.  "I knew you could do it!"
	"I thought you said you couldn't cure diseases," Kaila mused, giving him a slight smile.
	"I can't.  It wasn't a sickness, it was a defect in the fox's brain," he answered.  "That, I can do something about."
	Eron was hugging the little fox kit, not even feeling its needle-like teeth as the fox bit him on the paw.  He held it out to arm's reach and grinned up at it.  "Can I keep him, Papa?" he asked breathlessly.  "His mama abandoned him, and he needs someone to take care of him!"
	"Her," he corrected absently.
	"Please?" he begged.  "You said last month we could get a cat!  Why can't I have this instead of a cat?"
	Tarrin looked at his cub, and saw that same look of determination.  Eron wasn't about to take no for an answer, and to be honest, Tarrin wasn't entirely opposed to the idea.  He could simply tell the fox what it needed to know, so controlling it wouldn't be a problem.  Besides, Tarrin admired the little animal's spunk.  And in a way, he really couldn't say no to Eron.  His son rarely asked him for anything, content with what he got and never complaining about the extra attention that was always afforded to Jasana because of who and what she was.  If Eron wanted to keep the fox, if it made him happy, then he saw no reason against it.
	"So I did," he admitted.  "And the fox is just as good as a cat, as far as I'm concerned.  I'll have to ask the fox, though.  If it doesn't want to go with you, then that's that, cub."
	"Alright," he said, hastily handing the fox kit over to Tarrin.  He took it in his paw, ignoring its little teeth as it tried to bite through the thick skin of his pad, and then opened it.  Tarrin's paw was so huge that the entire kit fit easily on the pad on his palm, standing there trying to tear a chunk of the thick black pad away with its little teeth.  It was certainly a fearless little fox, Tarrin mused with a half smile.  He centered himself on the animal, forming an image and an intent in his mind, then reached out and made a connection to the endless energy of the All.  It read his intent and saw his image, and then formed a bridge of awareness between him and the fox.
	It wasn't easy.  The fox was a baby, an infant, and she had very little grasp of the concepts of communication.  Tarrin had to communicate with her at a primal level, but it seemed to work.  He simply told the fox that her mother was gone, and she was free to come and live with Eron if that was alright with her, that Eron would feed her and care for her and protect her from predators.  The fox absorbed that with her infant comprehension and replied that if her mother really was gone, then she wouldn't mind.
	There shouldn't be too many problems, he reasoned.  The fox was just a baby, but it was very close to weaning, and after asking her, he found out that her mother had been introducing her to meat.  That meant that it wouldn't be any trouble to switch her over.  All it would take would be instructions about where she could relieve herself, and she'd be no problem at all.  And in a way, he sort of liked the idea of having an animal around the house that everyone couldn't talk to.  It would seem more like a pet that way.
	Tarrin took a moment to explain some things to the kit.  Things like them not being enemies, the kit was safe and would be cared for, and they'd be moving to a place much less hot than this, where game was abundant.  The fox didn't mind, in fact she seemed rather enthusiastic about the idea.  Tarrin had an image of a miniature Kedaira, a powerful, super-efficient predator wreaking havoc on the ecosystem around his house, but he discounted that quickly.  Even if the fox got big, the only thing she'd really threaten would be rodents, rabbits, and perhaps birds.  And the Goddess only knew, there were more than enough of them around his house.  Besides, she hadn't really been taught to hunt yet, which was what her mother would have done.  Eron would prob