AN: This story takes place in the universe of Alder.

“You put the cut here…”

“Yeah…”

“About this long…”

“Yeah…”

“And then you – ooh – pull out the organs…”

“That’s disgusting, Lady. Why did you learn to do this?”

Lorraine gave her small charge a mock hurt look. “I once earned my living this way, young lordling. We weren’t all born within sight of the moons.”

The seven-year-old Montmarle boy’s eyes grew wide. “Lady,” he breathed, “You were born?”

Her Great and Terrible Sorceress sighed. “I didn’t pop out of the ground. I had a mother, just like everyone else.”

Aiden grinned and smiled, as if he knew something no one else in the world did.

Turns out, he was right.

“Was her name Yanaile?”

Lorraine caught her breath as the word sunk into her memories. “How…?”

“I hear you say that sometimes, when I’m up late and you’re still asleep.” He answered simply.

“No,” she mumbled.

“What?” the boy asked.

“No,” she said again, closing her eyes gently. “Yanaile was not my mother.”

The boy cocked his head to one side. “Who was she?”

She opened her eyes and gave the boy a warm smile. “Come wash your hands. I’ll tell you on the way.”

They left the little kitchen in the little shack and walked over to a tidepool. Lorraine lived her until then solitary life in a rickety wooden shack on an island little than a spit of rock off the coast of Ris House’s lands in Shunnoir. All the drinking water either fisherman brought to her, or she purified the seawater for her and her small charge.

They both knelt down by the pool of water, the sorceress sweeping her skirts out of her way.

As Aiden washed the fish guts from his hands, he asked Lorraine another question.

“Why did you decide to take care of me?”

“I thought you wanted to hear about Yanaile?” she asked, a little dejectedly.

Aiden flipped his head to the side. “I do. But I want to know why you took me in, too.”

Lorraine put her hands gently on the boy’s shoulders, as if they belonged to an old woman.

“Aiden,” she said, “I see great things for you. For all your life, you’ll be surrounded by powerful people. Honorable deeds will be your issue. I asked the Montmarle for you, Aiden, because I think I can better this country by doing it. Because you may one day rule Shunnoir.”

The boy laughed nervously, fidgeting a little in her grasp. “That’s touched, Lorraine. I’ll never be king.”

The woman reciprocated his earlier action. “Maybe, I said. Maybe. Actually…” she continued, a secret little smile on her face.

“What?”

She pulled him into a hug. “I really like having you for company.”

He returned the hug, a happy little smile on his face. Lorraine’s pale flesh was indeed cold to the touch, but a very comforting fire burned at her core, keeping her embraces warm. He loved her like his own mother. More. Her Great and Terrible Sorceress Lorraine, instead of Lady Emmel Montmarle, at least, would be motherly.

“Now,” she continued. “Do you want to hear about Yanaile?”

Aiden nodded enthusiastically. Lorraine smiled again; she smiled a lot where the boy was concerned.

“Yanaile means ‘crow’ in Middle Shunnois, very appropriate for the…girl I knew by that name. She was clever – maybe not so pretty – but she had those who loved her. She got married, and then her husband died.”

Aiden looked very into the story, poor honest kid. “What happened next?”

Lorraine looked off across the sea. The little Montmarle followed her gaze, puzzled by the sadness in her strange, reptilian, bottomless eyes.

The sorceress sighed, smiled, and patted him on the back. “She did what everyone does, at some point. She grew up. Now go back to the house.”

While Aiden ran back to their sorry domicile, his rough commoner’s clothes flapping in the stiff sea breezes like her hair, Lorraine stood, clasping her hands together in front of her, watching him. She cried silently, tears mixing with the spray of the sea, for her long-lost childhood.

Feathery black figures rustled on the roof. Cawing rang out across the water, never, ever drowned out by the sound of the crashing waves.