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Crossing Boundaries

Part Four

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by anonymous

Continued from part three…

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Twenty years ago…

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“Come on!"

An anthro wolf woman clung to her husband, fear lining her face, his wizened brows no longer enough to comfort her. Something had gone wrong, very terribly wrong, blistering cries scorching the air, though they were not expected, not something that should have been there.

Tears squeezed from her eyes, hair swept back from her face in a loose braid. Her husband had grabbed her before she had been able to do anything more with it and even then she had not realised that taking her time was not an option.

Their homes ranged from simple to grand, the magic that ran through their blood, a skill to be trained and honed and practised, granting them more than if their civilisations had been built on mere coin in the anthro lands. No, they had more, could do more, and maybe that was one of too many reasons why they had thought that they would be able to take on and attack the human lands, though most civilians had no say in that. They had gone along with it, of course, for there had been few protests, but things had gone sourer and further south than anyone could have ever imagined.

Fires blazed as she fled, her husband grabbing at her arm, lips moving soundlessly as an explosion ripped all other sounds from the air. It compounded on her eardrums and yet all she could do was put her head down, bare hind paws pounding the cobbled, cute street of the old-fashioned area that she and her husband had called home.

It would never again be their home. Not after the counterattack from the human lands, their continent, had struck to the heart of their beloved country.

“This way, this way!"

An executive stood tall, another wolf whose muzzle tipped up, though there were other typos of anthros there too, deer and foxes and oxen and more – so many that her eyes could not keep up with them. Yet all she could do was run, her head down, following the evacuation orders, breath catching in her throat, ripping through her lungs as if her firstborn had been taken from her breast.

“No… No…" She muttered, thoughts in a whirl. “This can't… No…"

Forming a full sentence was not to be, the pain inside cutting deep, tangling with fear. Outside the town, anthro soldiers marched, protecting civilians like her. Armed with bows and arrows, spears and swords, they relied on more rudimentary weapons, trusting their magic, as they did with so many things, to keep them safe.

It, however, was not to be. Quite rightly, the humans had pushed back the attack of the anthros on their lands and speared into their territory, countering their strikes with their own. Chainmail may have glistened with fresh blood and glinted in the darting rays of the morning sun, slanting between cloud cover, but it and the brigandine armour was nowhere near enough to protect and defend them from the might of an enemy that they were, by far, outclassed.

The battle mages stood tall, the best of the best of the offensive magic users, confident in their power. They were strong, a gazelle from further into the continent standing beside a badger, shoulder to shoulder despite the differences in their species. For it was those differences that made them strong, the escort soldiers embroiled in heavier, more protective armour still, infused and imbued with magical runes. Whereas it could not stand off against an attack forever, they had no reason to believe that their armour, as it was, would ever fail.

The flexible, enchanted plate armour gleamed sharply in a beam of sunshine, soldiers and mages standing ready on a wide street near the outskirts of town. A strong place to defend, they held their ground, for the wide road would lead them right to the centre of town and the heart of the town, right to those civilians that they sought to protect. And that was just why the lower-ranking soldiers levelled spears, pikes at the ready to create a barricade right at the front, though not even those soldiers feared for their lives. They trusted magic to protect them and they were there to aid in that, to protect those that they had already vowed to lay down their lives for.

The armoured transports, however, were far beyond anything that they had ever seen, rumbling on huge wheels with thick, deep treads that ground into the earth, crushing cobblestones, making a mockery of the roads that they had poured such love and care into. They were heaving, metal monstrosities far beyond the elegance that the anthro lands coveted in any means of transport, considering themselves better than humans partly because of that too. Yet they could never have expected just how brute force would have come into play in that manner.

“Out, out, out!"

The civilians too close to the front lines scarpered, fleeing, hardly able to follow the marshalling soldiers, those that had so much fear in their eyes that they hardly knew how to direct them themselves. Some of the soldiers had not even seen combat before, wet behind the years and too young for the sorrow that they were about to become intimately acquainted with. A stallion grabbed the arm of another wolf and thrust her on, directed her down a side street: in that direction, she would have a better chance of escaping the pressing attack.

The thought was not one that he should have had for, of course, their mages were more than enough to send the humans scurrying away, their tails tucked between their legs… Weren't they? That was what he thought, what he'd been told, though the shiver of cold trepidation curling and trembling into the pit of his stomach clawed at another tale.

The anthros, however, had transport of their own, magically infused plates sliding seamlessly over one another so that no weak spot was exposed. The magic that bolted the plates together left little to be attacked, no point at which to pass into, confident in its defensibility against magic or even the clang of metal against their sides. Those transports, however, containing elites from the town as they hastened away from conflict, were lighter and more mobile, giving the impression that they were less than what the humans boasted for themselves.

Whose were better? Who was to say?

“Come on!"

A wolf solider howled, head thrown back for a split second, a call to action. Yet he was not quick enough, ears pricked to catch anything he could from the lines of defending soldiers further away, light blasting by his vision. So bright that he staggered back, an arm flung up over his face, he gasped, jaw falling slack, the resounding boom sending him flying. He fell hard to the paved ground, a town never something that should have been used as the site for a battleground, a belltower somewhere deeper into the time chiming, ringing out with magical timing. They didn't need anyone to stand there and ring them.

There was no order as the beam of light hit, slamming into a building and punching a hole through the roof and out the other side. That was only the start of it, screams rising, civilians scattering, the lines of their evacuating transports leaving in haste. The line of them was the ultimate target, drawing in the attacking human soldiers, another beam and then another lancing into the transports containing the elite.

Horror exploded, metal blasting out, the transporting vehicles that were struck with their delicate wheels and hidden engines, no windows bar for the driver to see with a magical screen… Gone, all gone. There remained not a shred to suggest that they had once been the most well-researched military transport vehicles that the engineering mages had to offer, chaos erupted, burning scraps raining down.

Anthros scrabbled and scraped, fleeing and hiding. Down back alleys, into the basements of their homes – anything to feel protected, like they had a chance. The humans couldn't want them, surely, but it was not just humans out there but the anthro dog soldiers that lived in their lands too, the strange relationship between humans and dogs something that other anthros, in their own lands, simply could not understand. Maybe they never would, maybe things would come out in time. But amid battle was not the time to muse over such thoughts.

The dogs were relentless, encompassing all breeds, though their helms and protective armour, muted with dust so that few gleams remained to nod to the quality of the metalwork, hid who they were. They did not need a face to level their guns and serve their masters, one raising a huge firearm with a wide barrel that should have had lower accuracy than it actually did. They rocked back from the force of it, a smaller beam of light that was still destructive lancing forth, as straight as an arrow with the deadly tip of such.

It slashed into a building, ripping a hole in the old stonework, the soldiers battling on, the mages not able to hold them off, eyes wide, the first hints of fear pulling at them. Their hands may have been raised, lips moving to incite incantations and spells that should have been pulled from their minds alone by that point, but the battle, even before it had reached its peak, had surely already been lost.

The civilians knew not what was happening, resounding booms clamouring through a town that they had thought they had known, smoke and dust swirling, pulled into their lungs. The wolf anthro leaned over, coughing, her husband ahead, calling to her, yet the din struck her sensitive ears too viciously even as he tried so desperately to pull her on.

“Now!"

She saw his lips moving, even though there was no sound other than the dull, roaring blast of her heartbeat in her own ears.

“We have to go! Now! Get up!"

Was she down on the ground? Her husband pulled her to the side, hiding behind a stationary vehicle, not something that was armoured, nothing much of protection for them. But maybe they didn't need to be protected if only they could go undetected, breath catching, heaving, trying to subdue their streaming eyes, smoke weaving into the essence of their bodies.

There, however, they could hide, still not believing what they saw. Her husband frowned deeply, crouched down in his good trousers, though the fine cloth was ruined. He was not a battle mage, his magical training lying more specifically in architecture, but it was not as if he could not do other, basic things with magic.

His fingers closed into a fist, claws biting into the palm of his hand. Not that any of that would be helpful in battle, in getting his wife out of there.

Her lips moved, a healer, calling on her training to feed goodness into a scrape on her arm, for the body could not be knitted together so easily. It could, however, be placed in the best position to heal and the things that stopped one from healing, like infection, swept out entirely. That was why there were so few deaths from those that entered their hospitals and medical centres.

That was different on a battlefield, the town that they had known exploding before their eyes. Rocks from the walls of the stylised houses that they had loved, the shops that they had frequented – they flew in all directions, adding projectiles and fuel to the fire, flames flickering, dancing as they crept along timber beams and roofs. They were supposed to have been flame-retardant and protected – so what was it in the humans' arsenal that sliced through all of that as if it had never existed?

There was no order to any of it, soldiers with helms running with their heads down, trying to usher civilians to some semblance of safety. Yet the dog soldiers had broken through the front lines, mages scattered and fighting to regroup, their supporting elite soldiers struck down while they were left helpless.

A lone transport vehicle tried to rumble away too close to them as they lay down closer still to the ground, the male wolf's arm around her, drawing her close, but the explosion could not be hidden from. It blasted the transport to smithereens, debris flying, and the wolf female cried out sharply as something struck her arm. The pain was sharpening, clearing, something that should have brought clarity to her and yet only clawed a howl into her throat, her husband's hold tightening, trying to shush her. Who knew whether the canine soldiers would hear her in the cacophony of chaos?

The dogs advanced through the streets, their plate armour securing them while the helmet came with a visor through which they could see. They did not seem to discriminate between civilian or soldier as one faced off against a swordsman, whose hands trembled, the gun firing seemingly without any direction from the dog anthro that held it. As if a bolt of forked lightning cracked forth from it, striking him in the chest, though no one saw where the knocked-back body flew off to, the end for him, a fate that would be spoken of as a whole in years to come.

Other guns, coil guns, fired pieces of metal at high speeds, though they were not the crude bullets that the anthros may have expected them to wield. No, they were more sophisticated with the education of the humans behind them, the ones who had the knowledge to create their weapons, who armed them with everything that they needed to blast through armour and strike several rounds into magically infused armour before that too shattered.

The wolf woman cowered, eyes brimming over. Should she run? But her husband was there with her and she wanted to stay close, the warmth of him against her arm all the more important, rooting her in place. It was what she craved, what she needed, panting lightly, but the pain, oh… The pain. She could not take that away from herself, no matter how much support she had from her husband as the coil guns fired repeatedly, slashing through the ranks of soldiers who had been set to defend them.

The mages? Where were the mages? No trace of magic was to be seen either as light beams lanced from other firearms, bolting forth like a horse out of the starting gates. That was the largest of the weapons, glowing faintly, weighty in the hands of the dog anthro who held it, yet his species could not be determined behind his helm.

The wolf shuddered, nose tipped down. His eyes had to be dead behind that helm.

The battle raged on, yet those watching, hiding where they knew they had nowhere to flee to in time, knew that it was a losing battle, the time only telling in the pace of the loss. One moment after another passed, bit by bit, the wolves shifting back into an abandoned building, though the windows had been blown out of it. There was nothing there to protect them if either the dog soldiers or the human generals had a mind to flush them out like rabbits out of a burrow, and yet their horror remained transfixed on those that should never have brought them down so low.

Anthro soldiers fell in swathes, bodies hitting the floor, dead in a heartbeat. It was a quick end for them, at the very least, the dog anthros methodical in their methods of dispatch. There was no cruelty or malice in them, after all, for they were only there to serve their human masters and no more than that, above all loyal to those that they served, day in and day out. There was nothing else in their lives but their loyalty and servitude, the defining factors that drove them forward, step after step and draw after draw. It was all that they knew and, fairly so, they behaved in the manners in which they had been trained.

They were not to blame, though there was no cruelty there, no taking of prisoners to torture. Where civilians hid, they were not sought out, the opposing soldiers wrapped up only in finding the centre, the strong holding, the executives who held the power and would be stripped down as their masters worked their way deeper and deeper into anthro territory.

There were other troops, stronger troops, enchanted armour-bearing soldiers rushing to the front, meeting the canine soldiers head-on. Their swords were imbued with power too and, although they were not as strong as the canines, it was clear that they managed to land a few hits, the weak spots of armour lingering at the joints. No matter how thick plate-armour was, the underarms and groin were easy targets to a skilled soldier. They'd only never thought that such tactics were things that they would ever need to use in real combat.

Some of the dog's armour was not able to stand up to the stronger magic too, blasting through, swords cutting with renewed strength, archers lining up on the rooftops to aim. Mages too had managed to regroup, though they were less flexible and adaptable after having scattered, their training keeping them to only one kind of plan, something too rigid to stand up to enemies that broke all their rules of combat and then some.

“Soldiers! Take formation!"

They were directed by a battle-hardened old wolf who had the stereotypical scar on his muzzle, his vision weaker in one eye than the other. It was the stronghold, after all, of wolf territory, so it made sense that more wolves than other kinds of anthros lived there, but not all rose through the ranks as he had. He'd seen much, learned more, and kept a lot close to his heart. For bringing others into the wiles of war and the battlefield, despite their relatively peaceful times closer to home, was not something that he was all that keen to do. Bringing them home safe, however… The wolf furrowed his brow. That appeared to be something that he was no longer able to do.

A family of foxes cowered together, too innocent for the likes of the world, but the commander could not do anything for them. He had to protect them, do more for them in other ways, all that he could possibly do in directing the troops.

They could not fall back.

“Stand your ground!"

They could not give ground, none at all, the mages protected, secluded away. The old wolf's eyes gleamed. Maybe that meant they had a chance. He had to believe they had a chance.

Arrows filled the air as he swept his arm down, setting off a magical signal, even though he did not hold his magic training in high regard. No, he was a strategist, one who looked ahead, seeing the next move the enemy made before they had even thought of it themselves, and brute force would at least stop them in their tracks for a moment, he was sure.

The tide of canine anthros slowed, some stumbling, others falling, his heart lifting, but not for their death. The stutter in the flow of them rippled back through the ranks, though the anthro soldiers on the non-human side suffered too, comrades falling, horrified eyes locking onto the bodies that no longer had any life in them. But the ebb and flow of battle moved on far too swiftly for anyone to mourn, forced to carry that horror along with them as they forced their way onward.

The mages struck, magic cutting deep into the hearts of dog soldiers and striking them down. Perhaps they should have wondered why there were no humans obvious on the front lines but, truly, they had more than enough canine soldiers to do the work for them. What more could they want for, in that regard? Their magic was bold and offensive, lighting arrows even as they rained down, calling on the elements to hurl explosive fireballs into the midst of the attacking lines, dogs howling, formations breaking.

They were better than the enchanted weapons and one could have hoped that they would turn the tide of the battle, if only they kept on, lightning cracking, striking through the sky as if it aimed to split it in two. Every drop of moisture was scoured from the air and a deluge of a tidal wave, from entirely the wrong direction, dropping on the troops, soaking their guns, which were not magically infused against such damage. They'd never thought that such a thing would be required.

The dogs howled, falling in swathes, icicles lancing into their bodies. As was the case for most battles where distance had to be a factor, projectiles were the tool of choice, shooting forth, formed from the elements, the mages even sinking their power deep into the earth, forcing it to crack and shake and split. That, however, was more difficult to control, sending fault lines splitting down the streets, ripping up the roads, canines plunging into the depths of the earth. Chaos abounded and yet they kept right on coming, marching forth as if they saw none of the terror, home soldiers leaping onto them with feral cries of desperation in war.

“Yes!"

He growled, smacking his fist into the palm of his opposite hand, aching to be there, in the thick of it. But he had to command, had to lead where he was, using the enchanted blocks of metal that he had been given to set off signal after signal to his troops, the mages and back to base. They would all need to know what had come…

But not even he could have expected what would happen next, the lead battle mage standing tall, lightning crackling from her fingertips. She was a force to be reckoned with, the one who stood up against everyone, and yet the serpent's head turned with a glint in her dark eye. The pupil, already narrowed to a reptilian slit, darkened further, the yellow of it sharp and conniving and yet it was not her intelligence there that could be seen anymore.

It was evil. Her green scales smoothed back down over her head, no cobra hood to be found on her type of serpent despite how she presented herself. A smile came with the flash of her venomous fangs, dripping with glistening, sickening fluid, but her eyes were on her own comrades, her own troops, those that had fought beside her, shoulder to shoulder.

Only later would it come out what had happened, her hands outstretched, tail lashing the air, raining thunder and lightning down on them. Yet it was her skill as the lead battle mage that came into play there, retaining the destruction solely to her own and not touching a single canine soldier nor the humans moving amongst them, advancing as their plans came to final fruition.

For that battle at least.

The anthro troops fell, mages and soldiers alike. There was no evading it and kind souls turned their eyes from the death, the fading of lives that had so much left to be lived. One could only consider it a blessing that the end of their time on the land that they loved came swiftly and decisively. They felt no pain.

The civilians, however, were left with the smouldering, burning, steaming wreckage, their town destroyed, the human stalking forth, surrounding by canine soldiers, bodyguards, all for their protection when they had struck down so many already. The wolf woman cowered, her husband right there by her side, but there was still nowhere to go as a human, floating rather than walking with those strange, psychic abilities of theirs, took centre stage in the play of destruction.

The burning wreckage of a building that had once been a sweet shop did not bother him, merely moving over the flames without being touched by them. His smile pulled eerily at his lips, showing through his helmet where the front visor had been pushed up even if his eyes could not be seen. The licking, flickering flames did not seem to be able to snap up the fuel of his clothing, no matter how closely he floated. The wolf trembled. Where was his shield? Did they not even need magic or a physical shield to protect themselves?

His armour was more ornate and there was no space within the helm for his ears, like with the canines, though theirs was designed to be chunky and blocky, imagining muzzles and the rougher head shape of an anthro creature that humans were more familiar with. Yet the spiralling designs on his armour were for show and did not speak of a real battle as the wolves hid, peering over the broken sill of a building, their ears laid flat to their heads so that they could not be seen by picking up.

“Tend to your wounded."

The human, faceless and nameless, ordered the dog anthros as if they were servants in employ: a foreign concept to the wolves. They did not enslave other species and that the dogs obeyed the humans so readily… It was a strange concept, a foreign concept, a concept that did not make any sense at all, not to them. But it didn't have to when it came to one species overcoming the other, dominating them, bringing them down to their knees, even if the dogs, truly, had always been quite content with their position.

The battle mage, the only one remaining, walked straight up to the human, removing the stylised helm that had only covered some of her features, the serpent's tongue flickering out darkly. The underside of her jaw was lighter in colour, a yellow-green shade sweeping down her throat, though she stood there as still as a statue, staring blankly ahead as if she saw nothing at all.

The human's lips, visible along with his chin, curved up into a smile.

“Excellent."

He said no more than that, but the wolf got to hear no more as his head snapped towards her, something pulling at her, clutching her, as if the wind itself had grown fingers and was intent on sinking them into her hide through any means possible. She could not help herself, crying out, twisting, dragged out of her hiding place along with her husband, while others in there that had taken refuge with them hunkered down, hoping against hope that they would not be uncovered.

Held in the air as if by her shoulders, the wolf woman heaved and gasped, her eyes wide and bulging, a kind of terror that could not be controlled ripping through her. Her husband was right there by her side but all she could do was lock onto the man behind the helm, something sharp plunging into her head, though there was no tool to be seen.

Her mind swam, flickering from thought to thought, though there was no pain, not after the initial, confusing penetration. She grunted thickly, eyes closing – and then she was on the ground with her husband, the two of them on all fours, gasping and heaving, a strange sense of violation stirring uneasily in the pits of their stomachs.

“Only civilians." The human's announcement surprised no one. “Follow."

The dogs leapt to heel, keeping close, noses quivering as they sifted through the scents. Yet even their sensitive sense of smell was teased down by the carnage, unable to sniff out the hiding anthros as easily with so much to confuse them.

“There are priority targets hidden here, according to her mind." The human inclined his head to the battle mage, although that was not something that the canine anthros could understand the implications of. “Search them out and we shall be going."

The battle mage followed him as he floated deeper into the town, leaving the wolf and her husband there to cry, to cling to each other. No prisoners that were not their intended targets, the ones that they had to take for reasoning, interrogation, perhaps even ransom back to officials, were taken, leaving the civilians behind. It was a far cry from the carnage that had swept the town when anthros had been gunned down without any kind of discrimination for who they were and what they were there for, the humans intent on forcing their army on at all costs.

But no one was going to tell them to stop.

The war had already been won.

*

Back in the present time…

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The anthro wolf started awake, fumbling for her lamp, a tightness in her chest that she had not felt in years. The fear, oh, the fear – it was still there, even though she thought she should well have been over that by that time. It took too long to slow her heartbeat again, nerves frazzled, trying to repeat to herself, as she had so many times over, that it was all in the past, that it was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, something that had been a horror but could not hurt her in the present.

That was not the case for her, however. It was not so easy to convince a mind that what it thought was true and took as a fact was not the truth, not her present. Yet all she could do was shakily comb her blonde hair back, sweeping it out of her face, though it was struck through with more strands of grey in that time than it had been in her younger years, betraying her age.

Breathe… It's all okay.

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But it wasn't okay. She remembered too clearly how they had fled the country, the war streaming forth, humans taking all that they pleased. Every anthro regretted attacking the humans first but it had been far too late to take that back after everything that had taken place, the wolf trying to sweep the memories from her mind. What she did not know, however, remembering how she had held her husband's hand so tightly that it had made hers hurt, that pushing memories down and locking them away left her vulnerable to more.

Dead friends in the street.

Burning pyres of bodies.

Youngsters crying, orphaned.

The flashbacks kept coming, breath quickening, a tight band around her chest.

Breathe, honey, breathe.

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But they were there, one after the other, the feel of having a human in her mind, how the humans had struck the minds of anthros, soldiers and civilians alike, to force them to fight their own or give up their secrets. Even one of the airships that her kind had been so proud of had exploded when they had thought they were the best of the best, completely indestructible, the fireball blasting through the magical shields, even the enchanted armour that had been painstakingly laid down over it having no effect against the power of the humans. The unseen weapon had blistered it right out of the sky, broken and flailing, every soul on board lost along with the lives in the city below that it had crashed into.

But she could not remain there in the memory for long, panting heavily, shaking her head, clenching and unclenching her hands. She drummed her fingers on the kitchen table, though could not fathom why such a dream had gripped her so wretchedly, waiting for the kettle to boil over the magic flame. Of course, they had amenities like electricity but anthros would forever remain divided on which way was the most efficient to work with, as everything was accessible to everyone. Magic was trained and practised but easily infuse into objects through enchantments, so it could be sold and made available to many. Truly, neither way was better when it came to everyday living, but it would forever remain something that was up for contention, everyone having their preference.

“A dream… Just a dream…"

She cradled a mug between her hands as she pondered the dream, dipping a toe into it and shuddering away. Why had that come to mind? Why had she been back there?

Oh, the answer was not that far off. Her daughter had completed one year at university so far, one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious, in the country, and she had not seen her… Well, that was not something that she wanted to consider either. That had been a long time. Too long, in fact, and she turned her muzzle from the past, eyes downcast. Only if one looked closer at her would they see the shadows under her eyes.

She drew the newspaper, how she preferred to read for it was easier on her eyes, across the table to her, shivering at the rustle of the magically inked paper. She'd never liked that sound. But the page was still opened to the human who had started at the magic university along with her daughter, her only family, one who had been distant from her for too long, even though she didn't want to consider her role in that. She had done her best for her daughter all along, to the best of her ability. That, in the end, was all that she could do.

A human… The fear was there and anyone she asked would have very much said that there was good reason for it, considering all that she had gone through. Looking back, all that she saw was the human's smile, how it had sickened her to her core that very day, how his violation of her mind had felt. He'd picked something out of her head and she didn't know what, but ever since then her own mind did not feel like it belonged to her, a sense of unease residing permanently in her heart.

If her daughter was around a human… She took a deep breath that did nothing to steady her. She did not know what she could say to help herself, but there surely could be no real risk to her daughter at the university itself…could there? Her husband had passed away from illness years ago and her stomach twisted at the thought of something lacking, something missing, the shape of him in bed beside her gone.

Logic and emotion did not always match up. She sighed, the water and coffee ready for her but her mind elsewhere. Maybe she would have to pay her daughter a visit to ease her mind…

Yet not even she could have imagined just what her daughter would be easing her way into.

_ _