What?!

I woke to the knowledge that something was out of place. Wrong. Dark gaze glanced around and there was the girl child .. Valerie ... sitting on one of my trunks watching me sleep. Her tiny boots not even able to touch the flooring of my wagon.

A rush of adrenaline ... I was wearing breeches but ... I am known for my dreams and that they sometimes edge over the line into waking life and I was unnerved by the child sitting there. I jerked my fur up as if I was exposed. Her voice was quiet but had the sharpness of youth.

"I've seen it before."

"Do not even talk like that around me .. you are too young to speak of such." Defensive .. "besides you did not see anything." I growled as my chest rose and fell still driven by the adrenaline. "How did you get in here?"

"I came up the stairs."

I snorted. "How did you get passed Yaz?"

"Who is Yaz?"

Snarl.."nevermind .. what do you want?"

She was still watching me with placid child-like innocence .. which as usual was completely unnerving to me ... as I drew my fingers down over my mouth still trying to still the rapid beating of my heart from the surprise of finding her there as I blinked away the vestiges of sleep still clinging to my eyes.

"I am the way to the woman."

"The hell you are!" I was moving .. in my rage and frustration with her words that made no sense to me in any way that I would accept ... I was going to chuck her out the flaps of my wagon by her short hair. But even as I shoved the fur aside and came to my feet something stopped me. My thoughts swirled but tried to congeal around something ... something .... "What woman?"

"The Woman."

"Get out of my wagon!" I snarled it .. the growl that formed the edges of those words shook the planks of my wagon tiny green sparks lifted from the remains of the coals in the copper bowl. But she seemed undisturbed as she slid from the trunk and her tiny boots click clacked across the flooring of my wagon to the flap. She did not look back as she left and I almost called out to her to come back. To explain what she had said.

Which woman?

I glanced around me .. rubbing at my eyes. Had she even been here? Was it a dream? What did it mean?

I shoved my feet into my boots and grabbed a jerkin as I ducked out from the flaps and I ran to where I had set up Beo and the girl child with a wagon.