Valtris Moonwalker

Daughter of Reythyra Starbeam and Lugeiros Moonwalker; Princess of the Wildfate.

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CHAPTER ONE: MENTOR

The smell of fresh herbs never got old, no matter whether Valtris was the herbalist or not. She could remember when this part of the den was her own little haven away from everyone else. But now she merely kept stock of things, and so it was a place she shared with her former apprentice, now that he'd taken on the role of herbalist for himself.

"Add a bit more of the winterfat," she said idly as Tasar mixed together a tincture. Her back was turned to him as she counted and sorted their collection of herbs, but she could smell the distinct scent of the medicine he was mixing. It needed more winterfat.

Tasar did not respond, though she could hear him pause in his mixing. There was a shuffling, and then a return of the grinding. It almost brought a smile to her face. Tasar wasn't the type to listen to others, though he'd gotten some sort of begrudging respect for her. Whether that was because she had been the one to take him in as her apprentice when none else would, or whether he had decided to be kind to her in her old age, she didn't know.

Valtris paused and turned her head to look at her former apprentice. He had never been one to use her title of Princess or bow at her feet because of it. She respected him for it. Perhaps that was why she had taken him in.

"You're staring," Tasar said after a while, though he hadn't turned away from his mixing.

"Forgive me," Valtris said. "Just an old lady being sentimental."

"Your parents are old," he said. "You're not."

"Six is old enough," Valtris said easily. She wondered if Tasar was simply in denial about her aging. She couldn't blame him. It seemed like just yesterday he was a growling, feral little thing that she corralled into mixing medicines. "I'll not bore you with how stiff my joints are or how I ache on rainy days."

Tasar looked away from his mixtures and turned to her. "If you're aching, then there's—"

"No need," Valtris said, shaking her head. She huffed. "Honestly, you're like my mother. Always nagging about this or that. You'd think she'd take it easy at her age."

Tasar's eyes narrowed. "I do not nag."

"You do," Valtris said, a mischievous smile forming upon her lips. "It's almost cute, really."

Tasar huffed from his nose in response and turned back to his tincture. Valtris smiled wider and strode over to him. He was far larger than her in size, by both the virtue of being a male and because she had been born too early to ever grow that large. A curse of her birth that her littermate Daerona shared. They were the smallest of their siblings, even smaller than the runts.

"Open wound salve?" she asked, peering over to the medicine he was mixing.

Tasar snorted this time. "The idiot hunters insist on going for large prey."

"Ah, but large prey feeds us best," Valtris said. "Who was injured this time?"

"No one of importance," Tasar said, and Valtris rolled her eyes. All were important in the Wildfate, from the pupsitters to the Alpha. At least that meant it wasn't her father or her siblings.

"If you say so," she said and turned back to the piles of herbs she'd been sorting through. They had plenty of the local stuff, but herbs from further away could stand to be replenished. She'd have to tell her mother to keep an eye out on her explorations.

Still. All was well enough. And she doubted anything would go awry anytime soon. In the reign of Reythyra Starbeam, everything was at peace.