One day, when she came to ‘work’, Mayr offered her a gift; it had been weeks and the struggle to balance the things she could touch and the things she couldn’t had become a visible struggle and it was driving Lauralae to the brink. The gift she offered were gloves, made of spider spin silk, enchanted to keep magic bound; if she wore them she would be able to touch things, people, and live as she might have if she wasn’t cursed. It wasn’t a cure and it was hardly anything of a step in the right direction but Lauralae felt as though she had, somehow, found a means of going forward. If she could continue like this, finding short-term reparations for what had happened to her because of her choices, then she might be able to continue to exist without losing herself entirely. In return, Lauralae offered to stay with her, to care for her in her growing age, to act as a true apprentice in as many ways as she could. It was all she had, but it seemed to be enough.

Time continued and, for months after, life didn’t much change - not until someone else came into her life. With her gloves on and her hood down Lauralae appeared to be a normal woman, a girl learning a craft from her elders and hoping for more from her life than, perhaps, what her parents might have asked for her. A man came into the store, offering coin for poisons, and Lauralae was struck with infatuation - the first she had ever claimed to have in her life, the first time she had ever dared to show any interest in someone. The man, Aramas, was secretive, sly, and she was enchanted by the mystery he offered, the distraction from the ever present weight of the cursed possession she had almost lost herself to. With her hair over her face, in her eyes, her hands kept out of sight, she offered him the image of a girl that might be something normal, something safe, never mentioning the curse that darkened her doors nor the things she did alone at night, the hunting for her food, the way she slept in a ball of fur rather than as a person.

Encouraged by Mayr, who had been hoping to guide the girl she had come to care for towards a simpler life than what she seemed to want to lead, she pushed herself towards a chance at happiness. She had never spent much time around men before, not in a romantic sense, and she was little more than an awkward presence in his life for some time.

Time went on and she danced around him for weeks, unsure how to act, what to say, even with the safety net of her hands kept out of sight and out of touch. It wasn’t falling in love (how can anyone love someone they don’t know, after all?) but it was a step in the right direction, a step towards being happy. The darkness inside of her seemed sedated and quieter the happier she was and she worked towards that, even as she attempted to ignore the flush of her cheeks and the rush of her heartbeat.

Things continued, quiet and simple, until conversation turned from discussion of poisons and herbs to talking about power, magic, the influence and talent needed to use it. While Lauralae had known Mayr accepted her for who she is and what she did she had never imagined someone might wonder and think the same things she would; that magic is power, that knowledge is strength, that having both is a gift, something to be cherished and understood. She took to him, starting to spend her time at his side when she was not learning with her teacher, giving herself over to the idea that she might be happy; she had a new life, now, and a chance at making something for herself that no one else could touch.

In hindsight, Lauralae would like to believe that that they loved one another. She would like to pretend that what had developed between them was real, but she knows the truth; she was a young girl blinded by first infatuation and the last remains of her innocence.

While Lauralae may have been inexperienced when it came to any kind of relationship that wasn’t somehow parental (Mayr becoming a surrogate for what she had lost in her exile) she knew that any kind of romance could not be forged on lies. SHe wante dto hope, she wanted to believe, and she knew that the only way to see if such a future was possible was to tell the truth. Not about everything - she was sure her ears were enough to give away who she might have been, once - but about what she was, what had happened to her and what she had become. It had been months that her life have revolved around talking to him when he stepped into the store and she knew that if she was going to move forward she would have to make sure he was aware of who she was. He could not love her, all of her, if he didn’t know the truth; so she showed him.

His reaction was nothing like she had expected.

She had no idea what was going through his mind when she had invited him out to talk, drawing him into the forest, but she stood before him, hair tied back to bare her cut ears, scarred and prominent, her hands moving to peel back her gloves. The poison in her fingertips was as rotten as ever, leaving them blackened and disgusting, her eyes following his gaze as they go from her to her face. She explained what she dared to do, explained that she had been blessed (cursed, she thought to herself, but dared not say aloud) as much as she could give him the information, explaining how she had been teaching herself, how Mayr had cared for her, offering as much as she could, considering her own lack of knowledge, and felt her hands shake as she watched him shut down.

She had thought he saw her, saw her beyond what she might have been, that he would have understood that she was something that he had said was something worth having, but she was wrong. When she confessed herself to him she saw nothing but the same anger and shame that she had seen in the faces of others before she had learned to keep herself quiet, hiding her ills and her power; the same disgust that made her turn away from the population.

Instead of turning to her and accepting her for who she was Lauralae found that she was faced with a man that wanted to kill her. In a world where magic was normal, where she had expected a welcome, for people to understand, for her to be accepted in a way she had never been in her homeland, she found that she was on the edge of things even now. His hands went to his daggers, the ones she had given him poisons for, helped him to prepare for whatever he wished to hunt or fight, and she reacted. Her hands, bare of her gloves, slid up her arm, nails scratching at her arms, drawing blood, the power flying out of her and leaping forward to attack and punish him for his shame of her. What she had thought was love developing inside of her fell prey to the darkness she had hoped she was overcoming and it took control of her.

When she woke up he was gone - she was weak, exhausted, and she had no idea what had happened or what she had done to him. All she knew was that moving hurt, the scratches on her arms were dirty with her blood and the only option in front of her was to return to her home and hope that no questions were asked. She had no choice but to continue as nothing had changed, to hope that Mayr heard nothing of the damage she had wrought and the things she had done to herself. She was no longer anything she had imagined herself to be, and she was forced to deal with that in the secrecy of her own mind. She became a shell.

Returning home took Lauralae some hours - to gather herself, to clean her arms in the river, to shove her fingers back in her gloves and hide her shaking body under the hood of her cloak. She made her way back to the house she called her own and slipped inside, climbing the stairs to find her surrogate mother, to ask for comfort, for something. Comfort was not to be found, however. Rather than finding her friend alive and well, waiting for her, perhaps fretting, Lauralae found nothing more than the body of the woman she had come to love.

There was no open wound, nothing more than a pale corpse and the scent of something familiar in the air - poison. She knew the source and forced herself to attempt to rationalise what had happened.

Aramas, damaged from Lauralae’s attack, had returned to the house of the woman he had assumed had been the one to teach her. She hadn’t told him the source of her power or the knowledge that she had been given from the attempt at her life in her homeland, only that she was loved by Mayr and given sanctuary, given a home, someone to love her. He had attempted to rid the world of the creature he thought was raising beings like Lauralae - and had broken her heart in the process. She buried Mayr and continued, living in her house, hoping that no one would ask questions - beyond saying that she had died in her sleep, Lauralae did not offer much.

She had something here, now. She had a home, a place to live, a means of earning money - people knew her name, now, and she continued for as long as she could. Living in the house her only friend had died in, however, grated on her, like a knife in her back that was being twisted by people each time they spoke to her, the distrust in their eyes; she had been loved by her Mayr but had never taken to the people around, too insular, too quiet, too sharp spoken and hard with her words. Lauralae was uncomfortable, she was unsettled, and she knew nothing but the fact that she couldn’t stay here. Living in the shadow of a death she had caused and the haunting knowledge that the man that had killed her only friend might return for her was driving her to the brink of insanity, as if she was giving into the voice that had first touched her when she had been home, and she began to travel. She kept the house, she returned when she needed money, when she needed things, but she dared not stay for too long. Each moment in that darkness made her feel as though she was losing herself to the curse that haunted her now - and she knew she had to escape.

This was how she became a wandering creature, reliant on the wolf she could claim to be and hiding in the shadows, only coming out when there was something to gain. She had fought for a new life, she had fought to survive with people, and had proven that nothing would change who she was. She could love someone, feel it in more ways than one, but it would never be enough. Her presence around people would do nothing more than cause more pain - first to herself, to the people she was close to and the people she saw as innocent, simply because she had no control over herself. She did not know how to manage the power she had and, so, she kept moving. Staying in one place was dangerous. Without her knowing Lauralae had become the very thing she had been taught to be afraid of as a child.

The desire to find out how to free herself of her bindings has lead her to using her other form to try and sneak, to try and learn what she could. Her time with Mayr had helped her learn to hunt, using her canine abilities to stalk prey for them to eat, and it was once she had realised the other potential for this that she came to think that, perhaps, she might have a better use for her abilities. A witch that could sneak around forests and places in the dark, hiding in the shadows with a natural instinct for the hunt? She was sure she could use that to her advantage - and so she started. She made promises to people looking for help - to hear if a rumour was true, to get something that had been stolen returned to them, to sneak into the dark of the forest to find a herb or a plant that no one else dared get - and she fulfilled them as best she could. She proved herself worthy and made a name for herself because of it; she was seen as a witch, a woman that could get things done, and she kept to it only because the money she could get was welcome. How else was she to bribe libraries, to take books, to study magic in the hope that she might free herself?

Today, Lauralae is little more than a woman that moves, the only tie that binds her to anything is the house that onced belonged to Mayr. It’s protected by her magic when she abandons it and she goes back in quiet moments, offering things for trade. Most of her time is spent in the forests in Unseelie territory, moving North when she hears whispers of magic that might help her overcome the creature she feels herself turning into. She cares very little for the upcoming war; her only goal is to break the curse that has seeped over her, to try and undo the things she had done so long ago, to find some measure of peace.