When Luma went to see the child, she thought her intention was clear. She'd do what most animals, especially predatory ones, did with the weakest of their litters: put the poor thing out of its misery. But once she was there, looking at the child, with the metaphorical weight of her baggage looming not far away, she started to think of others things. She thought of what her grandmere had done to her grandfather. She thought of her grandfather who accepted no weakness and only honored strength. She thought of what Eleanor had done to Rhys. She thought of what her grandmother had done to Eleanor. She thought of all these points in this cycle throughout her entire family, and, in that moment, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

What she did do, though, was step forward, slowly, cautiously, head and tail lowered as a display of peace and harmless Ness, and she started to sniff around the child, with its overpowering fetid odor of pain and fear and despair and other things more corporal and soiled. She was sniffing out blood in particular, to find wounds or scars or other things first, to then gently start licking its wounds, cleaning them up, and she and Rhys would do for each other as apology when they got a bit too carried away in their playfighting. And when she felt she'd sufficiently soothed at least a few of them, she just curled up beside the child, settling her head down in its lap to look up at it with her eyes big and full of sympathy, nudging its hand with her snout to encourage it to take comfort in her warmth, her soft fur, her heavy breathing.

She'd save her teeth for those who she was thinking could use a little pain themselves, for a while.