Xaviers!

"I know you haven't liked them in the past, yes?"

"So try me again," she says, yellow flashing in her eyes for a moment.

"Crows are always drawn to a free meal."

"See, it's not that I don't like that opinion. It's a fine one as far as opinions go. I just happen to know, at least on that count, it's wrong."

"It's a bit crude, I'll warrant. She's only a crow when viewed from one angle."

"If it's any consolation, I know individuals that are... further down the food chain than she is."

"Associating with some bottom feeders is usually inevitable," Tereza says, "Sometimes you do what you have to do. I wouldn't exactly put her low on the food chain though. *She* doesn't feel like a scavenger."

"There are funny things people will think to try to understand the unfathomable."

"It is one thing to think that battlefields draw crows. That's simply nature."

"It's another to draw the conclusion that a crow can cause a battle. That's divinity."

"I don't know that I'm to the latter, but I'm already beyond the former. It's too... simple."

"Mmm, you say that she's yours quite readily. But are you hers?"

"I would say 'yes', but your tone tells me you're implying more than that."

"They mean different things."

"As I said, there are others further down the food chain than her."

Tereza looks slightly suspicious, though it's hard to say how that's different from her normal expression. "So how would you describe your relationship to those lower on the food chain?"

"Oh, we talk from time to time. I like to think I live better than them. They think the same of me."

"So you wouldn't qualify them as 'yours'?"

"Oh, not mine in the least. You just... bump into people repeatedly, if you travel in certain circles."

"And all of these people? They as dangerous as you are?"

"Ah, the world is a dangerous place. If you're calling them 'people' you're being more charitable than I would."

"Now are you trying to flatter me here? I can acknowledge that I'm not the most dangerous thing out there."

"Well, your ability to transmit whatever this is to others is pretty dangerous."

"You seem to not fear it as much as you used to."

"It suits you."

"Her acceptance of things has helped, but what's done is done and I can't change that. I can make sure I don't give it to anyone else though."

"We're not meant to be alone. It's not in our nature."

"I didn't see you hunting with any others."

"No, you didn't."

"Many, many years ago I learned something."

"If I find one of my children I can do something to them. I can pit my wolf against theirs, my will against theirs, and if I prove the greater of the two then who they are is lost, drowned in the flood of the beast enthroned."

"They recognize me as their mistress. Not as alpha, but as someone who owns them. They will do anything I ask. They will hunt with me. They will even die for me..."

"...but they will never challenge me. Something is broken inside them, and if I look at their eyes and not their mouths, who they were is trapped inside, screaming."

"The ones who would mock me say that I lack the dominance to create such servants. That is not true. It isn't hard to do that, and that's the problem. It isn't real."

"Once I had a pack of them. Once, I tried to convince myself that is what I wanted."

"In the end, all of them died to my jaws. It was only right."

That actually seems to give Tereza pause. There's a part of her that expects this is some sort of play for sympathy, a seeming weakness to draw the hunter off her guard. But there's something raw about this that actually touches her sympathy. "And this is something you *have* to do?"

"The fact that I know how it can end doesn't mean I don't want a pack."

Tereza ponders for a long moment, "Then don't be alpha. Abdicate."

"If I am to do that, I need children with enough will to take the position, and who have tasted enough freedom to not fall into the same trap I did."

"Do you understand now?"

"So what you need is me..." Tereza says, possibly flattering herself a little, but getting most of the implications at least.

"One of these days one of you has to get it."

"Playing the law of averages?" One of her irises turns yellow.

"Oh I've tried it many ways. I've been kind, I've been cruel, sometimes both to the same child."

"Consider it a... work in progress."

"So whenever, whoever this child of yours actually can stand up to you, what then? A small happy family?"

"I am willing to be surprised, yes? I already tried forcing things."

"Besides, when wolves are happy what do the sheep do?"

"That will entirely depend on who the wolves consider sheep."

"You're starting to feel it, aren't you? That you're apart from some."

"Perhaps you felt that even before."

Tereza shrugs, "That hasn't changed." She said, "One of the few things that that 'school' taught me."

"Whether you consider yourself a shepherd or a wolf, you are apart from the sheep."

"Domesticate a wolf and you can use them to guard the sheep," she points out, "but point taken."

"A sheepdog is not a sheep either," she chuckles.

"And do you really feel all that domesticated?"

"No, but what else do you call a wolf who has decided guarding the sheep is better than scattering and hunting them?"