She nods, finished cleaning up all the blood.

Ash didn't stop at the edge of the park, but instead drove the carriage over the curb and into the grass beneath the trees. Ash knelt in the carriage next to Claire and swung Puck onto a shoulder, and dropped down. He'd stopped the carriage under the boughs of two enormous oaks, their gnarled branches completely shutting out the night sky. Ash carried Puck beneath the twisted giants and eased him down to the grass.

He follows calmly.

She clearly feels at peace here, what with all the nature around them.

Two figures stepped out of the tree trunks, materializing into view. They were both slender women, with moss green hair and skin like polished mahogany. Beetle black eyes peered out as the dryads stepped forward, the smell of fresh earth and bark thick in the air. Grimalkin and Ash nodded respectfully.

"We know why you have come," one dryad said, her voice the sigh of wind through the leaves. "The breeze whispers to us, news of faraway places. We know of your plight with the Iron King. We have been waiting for you."

She nods respectfully, sitting down at the stump of the large tree as she waits for them to continue.

He curls his tail around his paws, staying noticeably far away from the trees.

The second dryad sighed. "Death is a part of life." She regarded all of them with pitiless black eyes. "All things fade eventually, even one as long-lived as Puck. People will forget his stories, forget he ever was, and he will cease to be. It is the way of things."

(Quick question. Lin is with them, right?)

She tenses, standing. "Don't-don't tell me he's..." She trails off, looking down at Puck with fearful eyes.

(yep)


His ear flicks, and he looks like he wants to give her a few fierce, probably profane remarks, but he stays silent.