Kiela gaped at her in amazement. "You what?" She asked in disbelief.

Tori shook her head. "I'll tell you about it, but I don't want to have to stop and i don't want anyone interrupting. Come with me to my tent."

Kiela nodded and followed Tori to a small tent on the edge of the village. It was decorated with mountain lion pictures, and when Kiela looked to the ceiling in the interior it was covered in rows of delicately painted bones. Tori sat on the ground, and the others formed a circle with her.

"Alright," Tori said, once they had all been settled. "I'll tell you now. My first memory is of an Elder teaching me to climb trees, as this was always a skill that I excelled at. She held my feet and pushed me onto a low branch, laughing all the while. Life was good then, and it stayed like that for many years. Then, one day, a new elder came to my nursery. He called himself Manin, and he spoke of a world in which we could choose what type of shifter we could be, and choose a world in which the strong prospered and a the weak failed. His voice was powerful, and captivating. I believed him, I wanted the world he talked about as my own. He already had many followers, and the village filled with many children.

"But then things began to change. The smaller, weaker ones disappeared. I was good friends with one of the elders, her name was Yeala. She told me of things, terrible, horrible things that Manin was doing to create his perfect world. He was breeding shifters like animals in order to control what animal they would become, and killing the ones that didn't suit his plans. Yeala confronted him about it. She said that he was dehumanizing us, that he was discriminating upon who he thought was weak. She was so brave. Manin flew into a rage, and struck her face. There was so much force behind the blow that it snapped her neck. I was there, watching. Even now, years later, I still remember the sound of how her bones broke like wet wood..."

Kiela stared at her in horror. It was everything that she remembered, but coming back in another horrible story.

"Manin knew that I had heard them," Tori continued. "He turned the others in the nursery against me. He said that I was twisted in the head, and that they would become twisted too if they spoke to me. I became an outcast, not only disliked by him but avoided in fear by everyone else. It was a pleasure to leave.

"And so now you know the truth behind that place. It is born of Drisnôk, a place where all of our will is drained from us. Manin is a maniacal dictator, someone who will stop at nothing to rule everything. But they place where we grew up is not the same as here. Here, people do not leave us, and there are no tasks. Kiela," Tori looked at her with tears shining in her eyes. "We're your friends. We will never leave you. You have to trust us on that."

Kiela looked a Tori, tears dripping down her face. Tori reached out, and the two girls clutched each other close, holding each other up against the tides of their shared past. "I'm sorry," Kiela got out. She smiled at loon and Connix over Tori's shoulder. "I was just so scared. I was scared that I would loose you all."

"We were worried about you," loon said as the girls bro apart. He touched Kiela's shoulder. "You refused to see us, and it hurt. Tori and I suspected for a long time that you came from the same nursery as her."

"I acted about the same as you did when I first got here." Tori said sheepishly. "it took me a long time to stop hiding when the elders walked past."

"But we're okay now." Kiela said.

"Yes," Tori replied. "We're okay."