Yue moves as if she's being pulled on a string. And maybe she is. When the sun flashes its golden goodbye, she's usually already snuggled away in her home doing nothing more adventurous than baking sweet seed cakes with her special lavender-honey syrup to share a special nighttime treat with Kat. When the lanterns burst to life, it's a time for sitting next to grandmother's old chair with a blanket and a book, not for racing out to see what the changing of the lights has caught. An adventure in the night is something that you do in town, skipping through the streets to get close enough to the travel lodges to hear their drinking songs perhaps, or else to slip into her secret garden to teach Sis' songs to the grasses and flowers and see what new friends would sneak their own way in to share in her bounty of treats and head pats. That's the measure of the girl called Yue. It must be some new type of magic, then, that makes her feet so light she barely feels them touch the ground. It must be somebody's spell that broke Hyra's and turned her silly sword so light again, even lighter than she can remember it being. It's definitely magic more powerful than even the Threeshard Princess could muster that guides her sword arm through the air and places the wooden saber in a perfect guarding posture, because the clumsy stick arms of a silly village girl have no business knowing that kind of posture or power or poise. Let alone actually achieving them! But here she is. With her free arm held protectively across Hyra's body. With herself as a shield between the wolf girl and danger. With a [i]sword[/i] in her [i]hands[/i] pointed toward shapes in the dark that her eyes aren't quite sharp enough to catch but her heart tells her aren't any of the animals she knows and loves. "Wh-who's there?" she calls. Her voice is strong and sharp enough that you could almost ignore how much it's trembling, "Stay back! I'm warning you, you can't have her!" As though Hyra was the one they were here for, if they were here for anything at all. As if she was a delicate treasure in need of a strong warrior to protect her, as if Yue [i]was[/i] that warrior! As if any of this was not ridiculous and backwards, which of course it is, and yet she's here and she moved faster thank blinking, faster than thinking, fast enough that anybody who saw her and did not know her might even believe it. Hyra's hand is on her shoulder, pushing her away. Yue's body starts to tremble, and suddenly she can feel the weight of her sword again trying to drag her arm to the ground like shackles. Her knees knock together, but it's not because she's cold. Just the opposite, she's burning to death in the heat of her shame. Silly girl, stupid girl, what are you doing? You're making her job harder, is what you're doing? Stop it, put it down, find somewhere safe to hide before you get hurt! Before you hurt [i]her[/i], you, you... dummy! "I... I mean it! I-if you're hungry I've got plenty of food to share, b-b-but you'd better be nice about it! 'C-cause if you're t-t-trying to kidnap anybody I'll... beat you up! Don't think I won't!" Oh now she's gone and done it! Hyra's going to be so mad at her! And what if whatever's out there is actually really nice? And, oh no, what if they're [i]not![/i] She said all those things, and, and...! Oh no! Oh gosh oh no oh gosh! She hasn't shaken this badly since that time she lost her keys in that snowstorm and Sis made her go back out and find them as punishment and she had to walk back and forth across the lake [i]three times[/i] when it was [i]freezing[/i] and that's it, that's the only one she can remember right now she's never trembled this much in her entire life. But she doesn't move. Blushing and shaking and squeaking apologies under her breath for all she's worth, she doesn't move. Because when she turns her head she sees Hyra there in her aspect as the hunting wolf, and she's... she's known wolves before. None with such kissable lips (oh gosh nononono what) before, or hips that made her want to (stop it stop it stop it stop thinking about it Yue), but all the same. She's known wolves. She's heard their songs of beauty and their songs of pain and she's looked into their eyes before and... Well, it's just. Farmers chase them off, you see? And hunters trap and kill them. And village children tell each other stories about being gobbled up and then when a howl crests over a distant terrace they quiver with fright. Nobody ever takes the time to care how they're feeling, and... really when you get right down to it, they're not that different than the little fluffball taking shelter under her dress right now, are they? The ones with fangs, they... It's why she tries to smile, now. Even though her lips are quivering horribly and she must be the ugliest person in the world right now. Every wolf ought to know there's [i]somebody[/i] looking out for them. And Hyra is too special to lose to whatever weird monsters are creeping about tonight. Not the ones in the dark, and not the ones in her blood.