Juna ran through the trees while the ground came at her faster than she could read it, and she made herself keep her eyes forward.
'I was dead,' she thought, her feet finding roots her eyes had not caught up to, 'I remember dying, so how am I running right now?'
The memory came back the moment she reached for it, blood in her fur, pain moving through her body while voices shouted above her head.
She remembered the end of it best, the part where her body stopped listening while the world closed over her, which made waking beside a human fire something that should not have been possible.
'None of it makes sense,' she thought, clearing a fallen branch without losing a step, 'what did that human do to me?'
Thinking about him pulled her chest tight again, which annoyed her, because whatever sat under the tightness was not fear.
It was a pull, steady as a rope somebody else had hold of, and it followed her however far she ran.
She pressed a hand flat over her chest, 'why can I still feel him?' she thought, with tears already coming up, 'what is wrong with me?'
Humans had killed her family, so the moment that thought arrived her stride went to pieces under her.
She saw her mother on the ground again, smelled the smoke, heard men shouting while blades came through the dark.
Her breath broke on the memory this time, then it refused to come back clean.
'Humans did that,' she thought, wiping at her face and spreading the wet across it, 'humans took everything from me, so why am I tied to one of them now?'
The question made her sick, then the sickness got worse the longer she ran, because the pull never thinned out with distance.
By the time her legs began shaking she understood she had not been running toward anything, only away, which stopped being the same thing once the panic wore down.
The trees had started repeating themselves.
Nothing under her feet meant anything to her anymore, so when she finally slowed to a walk she could not name the direction she had come from, or the one she had been heading toward.
'Where am I even going?' she thought, stopping at last with her face wet, 'what am I supposed to do now?'
Nothing answered except her own breathing, along with that steady awareness of the human somewhere behind her.
She went down against a tree with her legs spent, then both hands came over her face while the crying got worse instead of better.
She stayed there shaking, without being sure what she was crying about anymore.
It went on until her face hurt, until her breathing came out thin and useless.
Somewhere in it she curled against the trunk with her knees pulled up to her chest.
'Why am I back?' she thought, wiping her face to no effect at all, 'why did I come back only to suffer in this world a second time?'
She never learned how long she stayed there while grief used up what her legs had left.
The crying wore down into shaking, then the shaking faded as sleep took her without asking.
She woke to the smell of cooking meat before anything else reached her.
The human sat across a small fire from her, turning a stick over the flames while the light moved on his face.
She came up fast, then stopped when something slid off her shoulders into her lap.
'He covered me,' she thought, taking the blanket in both hands before she could decide not to, 'so how did he even find me out here?'
'What does he want from me,' she thought while her pulse climbed and that pull in her chest answered before he did, 'and why am I still fastened to him?'
Her hand closed hard on the blanket.
Then her stomach made a noise that carried over the fire, so her face went hot.
Hajin laughed at that, which was not a cruel sound, only the sound of a man who had been waiting for it.
"So you are awake," he said, turning the meat once before pulling a piece free, "here, you should eat something."
She looked at his hand instead of the food, because he was still human however calmly he waited.
'How am I supposed to trust that?' she thought, watching the meat steam in the space between them, 'humans smile first, then they kill you when your guard drops.'
Her stomach twisted harder, the smell working on it every second, so her body moved before her judgment had finished arguing.
She came in slow with her eyes on his, took the meat out of his fingers, then backed off before he could shift his weight.
Back at the tree she sat down and ate while glaring at him over the food, waiting for the second he tried something.
"There is more when that runs out," he said, laying the stick back over the flames without looking up at her, "nobody here is counting."
She went on eating without giving him anything back.
'She went through something with humans,' he thought, listening to the way she tore into the meat while her whole body stayed tight, 'this is not ordinary fear.'
She stopped chewing long enough to speak, which took him by surprise.
"What did you do to me?" she asked, with the meat still shut inside one fist, "I was dead, I know that much."
"I put my hand out and pulled," he said, turning his palm over to look at it, "so I am the wrong person to ask."
"You are the only person here," she said, her voice coming out rough from the crying, "so you are the one I get to ask."
"Then we are both working with nothing," he said, feeding another branch into the fire, "so stay angry at me while you eat, it does not slow the cooking."
His eyes went back to the system, since he still had no real idea what he had summoned.
A tab he had not seen before sat under his status, so he opened it.
[ Summon Status ]
[ Active Summons: 1 ]
[ Juna ]
[ Name: Juna ]
[ Race: Wolf Beastkin ]
[ Rank: 1 Wing ]
[ EXP: 0 / 300,000 ]
[ Stat Multiplier: 1.5x ]
[ Starter Skill: Hunter's Nose ]
[ Bond State: Unstable ]
"One wing?" he said, glancing up at her and then back at the panel, "what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Who are you talking to?" she asked, her ears going flat under her hair, "there is nothing over there."
"A window only I can see," he said, waving two fingers through the middle of it to prove nothing at all, "which sounds worse out loud than it did inside my head."
She shifted to put the trunk at her back.
[ Wing count represents summon evolution stage. ]
[ Each wing is a multiplier on the summon's base capabilities. ]
[ 1 Wing = First evolution stage ]
[ Grants increased physical ability and one starter skill ]
[ Current starter skill: Hunter's Nose ]
'So wings are her rank,' he thought, looking over while she worked at the last of the meat, 'and one of them puts her above a normal fighter already.'
[ All summons begin at base mortal state after retrieval from the Veil. ]
[ Evolution rebuilds what was lost and opens future growth paths. ]
[ Higher wing counts indicate greater development, not fixed species rank. ]
'That makes more sense,' he thought, reading the last line a second time, 'though I have a long way to go before she can begin trusting me.'
The bond line sat at the bottom of the panel under everything else, so he spent a while working out how much of that particular word belonged to him rather than to the girl across the fire.
"I am not staying," she said, on her feet with the blanket still hanging off one arm, "you should know that before you feed me again."
"Then do not stay," he said, stretching out on his side of the fire with an arm under his head, "the wood is already cut, so it burns whether you use it or not."
She stood there through a long stretch of nothing, then sat back down at the far edge of the light.
He kept his eyes shut and let her believe he was asleep.