Fennel Thornwing crouched behind the hedge and tried to make himself small. He was not small. His bat wings folded tight against his back. His goat horns caught the low sun. His wolf teeth pressed against his lip when he tried to smile, which only made things worse. The grove behind him was empty. It had been empty for a season now. Something had driven the fairies out, and every hunted creature he had ever sheltered had scattered with them. He had chosen this hollow at the edge of the Thornwood to begin again. A sanctuary. A place where anything with fur or wing or scale could sleep without listening for footsteps. He had cleared the brambles. He had dug a shallow pool. He had left out plums. The plums sat untouched. A rabbit reached the edge of the clearing. It saw him. It ran. A finch dropped toward the pool, saw the shadow of his wings on the water, and shot straight up into the trees. He had watched this happen for six days. "You are frightening them," a voice said above him. Fennel looked up. A fairy hovered at the height of his horns. Green hair, a crown of small flowers, bare feet curled under her. He knew her. Sylvara Thornwhisper, who watched the old forest to the south. He had met her once at a tavern with a green flame, on a bad night for both of them. "I know," he said. His voice came out low and rough, the way it always did. He tried to soften it. That made it worse. "I do not know how to stop." Sylvara landed on a root. She studied him. "You cannot stop being what you are." "Then no one comes." "Then they must come to something else first." She pointed past him, deeper into the hollow. "Build a door they trust. Stand behind it." He followed her hand. He saw only trees. "A house," she said. "Stone. Roses on the walls. Windows they can look through before they meet you. Somewhere already gentle, so they judge the place before the keeper." She paused. "I have seen such a building west of here. Lavender stone. A library inside. No one lives there now." Fennel thought of the finch shooting up into the trees. He thought of eleven years of sitting still to prove a thing that his face kept unproving. "They will still see me at the door," he said. "Yes. But by then they will already be inside." He stood. The rabbit at the tree line bolted again at the sight of him rising. He did not flinch this time. He had a place to walk to. "Show me the way," he said. Sylvara lifted from the root. Her wings caught the light thin, the way a tired thing catches light. She flew west. Fennel folded his wings tighter and followed on foot.