Vael agreed to let Morgana speak with her directly.
It took most of an afternoon, with Morgana working slowly through the partially-constructed linguistic bridge, supplementing with the gentle patience of someone who understood that pushing a frightened child for information faster than they could comfortably give it was the fastest way to get no information at all. Satou stayed at the edge of this conversation, close enough to observe, far enough not to crowd. Seraphina found a position near the village's outer perimeter and did the natural thing for someone with wings and combat experience in an unfamiliar settlement — she became a quiet, reliable presence at the boundary, watching the forest without appearing to.
What Morgana reconstructed from the child Senna's account:
