The sun's heat was beginning to bounce off of the reddish sand and rocks as the caravan arrived at its new watering spot. After surreptitiously removing the life energy barrier that she'd erected around it the night before, Lilith got out of the way and maintained a low profile as Serans started calling out orders to everyone. Within minutes, most of the caravan's water barrels were either beside the well or headed there. A small framework had been erected above the hole so that buckets of water could be lowered and raised by windlass rather than by hand. As Shoy stepped back from that chore, he found Lilith at his side.

"Good morning, storesmaster."

"Uh? Oh! Good morning Adept. I-I guess words aren't really enough for what you did last night."

A slight smile played about Lilith's lips as she replied, "aren't enough in more ways than one I daresay. But to the point. I need an iron plate to cover the well with so nothing falls in after we leave."

"Um, good point. I'll go see what I can find." He hurried off without a backward glance.

Lilith's mouth tightened a bit as she looked around. Sure enough, supportiveness among the caravan members was being replaced by reverent awe. All well and good, she supposed, unless that awe was turned to fear again. So far, Turins' muttering wasn't enough to do that- he was too awe-stricken himself to say anything too obvious. In fact, when she deliberately looked him in the face he avoided her eyes, something that almost certainly wouldn't have happened the day before.

It was his friend Kors that worried her. Kors was another hard core hater of Lilith and all others like her. He had more brawns than brain, though, which was maybe the reason why he failed to appreciated what had happened. After one of Turins' muttered denials, he took it and didn't hesitate to tell everyone else. The fact that he boasted about it being Turins that had figured it out greatly undermined its effectiveness among most furs. But not all. Lilith watched narrowly. Corith's resistance had been neutralized by fear last night, but she suspected that was temporary.

It was at this point that Shoy returned with the iron cover and presented it to Lilith with a quick, "I think this will do you, adept, now I need to go check on how they're coming with the water barrels."

Lilith casually hefted the iron plate with one arm, weighing it in her mind. She decided it was heavy enough for what it had to do, so she walked over to the well site and took some estimates on size. It passed that way as well. She sat it down on the ground and watched for a while as another barrel was finished and hauled off. A look up at the sun told her what she needed to know.

Serans was feeling relieved, and yes, joyful. It had felt good to take definite action to resolve everything. The fact that he had deliberately not mentioned Lilith's role in it pricked him a bit, but the other fact that she had let him ignore her hadn't even entered his mind yet. It is her job, after all, he reassured himself. It's not like this sort of thing probably isn't an everyday occurence for her, almost. He jumped as a voice behind him said, "Good morning, Wagonmaster."

He turned around to find his guide staring at him, and his face tightened a bit. "Oh. Ah, good morning, Adept. I'm sorry I hadn't gotten around to thanking you sooner for this. I know it must have been a lot of work."

Lilith's slow shrug as she looked at the busy well site implied that it wasn't all that important. "Yes, it was, but it's all part of the job. Speaking of which, it looks like I won't be guiding you far today." As Serans began to look worried, she nodded towards the barrels and said, "how many barrels have you filled so far?"

After a bit of mental calculation, Serans replied. "Three."

Lilith nodded. "So it is taking about five minutes or so per barrel. That's actually better than I expected. But it means that it will take around an hour to fill up the barrels for two wagons. You're going to be here all day."

Serans nodded with a slightly worried look.

"Don't tell me you underestimated the food as well?"

"Not really underestimated, but it's going to be close- close, that is, for the horses and oxen. Your scurat filled our meat pots more than enough so that we don't have to worry about that, but it didn't help our grain supplies any."

"Hmm... sounds like I need to start finding fodder, too."

"You shouldn't. If you do, it'll be on the trip back. I'm carrying enough supplies for both ways. No use going halfway into the middle of nowhere and buying it at sky high prices when I can get it cheaper beforehand."

"That means you're carrying a lot of supplies in that you won't be carrying back out. Are you going to be using the extra space for more goods on the way out, or are you going to sell some of the wagons?"

Serans hesitated. "I'm not sure yet. I'll probably sell one of the supply wagons, though." He looked at Lilith with a speculative eye. "You know, I don't believe I mentioned that sort of thing to Xenith, so she couldn't have told you."

"You're right, she didn't. Remember, I do lead these things for a living. If you're guiding a caravan, it's rather important to notice how many wagons you have along. Misplacing one of those could ruin someone's day."

Serans winced at Lilith's dry humor, but she appeared not to notice as she smiled wryly and left with a casual flip of the hand.

Xenith was at rather loose ends. Her adept had told her to simply keep her eyes open so that the caravan wouldn't be taken by surprise. The way she'd said it, though, implied that Xenith might want to try watching with her eyes shut as well. More ways than one to watch, aren't there, she thought to herself. But her happiness was only surface deep. She wasn't feeling good about things this morning, but as to why she didn't really want to say. A small core of defiance rose in her, insisting on retaining something for itself.

She turned away from the activity around the well site just in time to avoid getting bumped by Kors. As she dodged out of his way, a sneer played around his lips as he said, "well, well, so the little magician's cub can't find her way around without hitting furs? Don't know much, do you."

Xenith's anger sparked, and she glared a bit before replying coolly, "I can find my way around well enough to help save your life, or do you enjoy dying of thirst?"

Kors' sarcastic laugh was intended to cut- and it did. "Ha! That wild tale about red glows and roars doesn't scare me. That vixen of yours just knew where an old well was and put on a show to fool a bunch of silly furs that wouldn't know their tails from a rope end."

Xenith's eyes blazed, but after biting out, "rope end! What would you know..." she ducked her head and pushed past Kors quickly enough so that by the time he realized what was happening, she was past and walking away at a speed just sort of a run. His mocking laughter followed her, though, making her ears go red as she began to cry with grief and humiliation. She was outside of the camp by now, which was fortunate since she would almost certainly have tripped over something if she weren't. Her total blindness to anything other than the gut churning sadness inside led to a moment of panic when a strong arm caught her around the waist and pulled her in.

"Whoa, now, where do you think you're going?" Lilith asked.

Xenith's tears thickened her voice as she muttered, "nowhere. Just walking."

"Uh huh. Just walking with your tail tucked between your legs far enough to brush your navel." Xenith hiccuped a bit through her tears as that mental image flashed through her mind. "You've been miserable all morning, Xenith. Are you sure you don't want to spit it out before it eats you up totally?"

As Xenith opened her mouth to reply, the cries and tears came out. She buried her head in Lilith's breasts and simply sobbed brokenly for a while. Lilith stroked her back gently, murmering "just let it go, Xenith, it's all going to be all right again. Just relax, there's a good vixen."

Finally, her tears subsided enough for her to whimper, "I'm sorry, Adept, really, truly, I am. I know I shouldn't have done it, but at the time it didn't seem like you'd mind and I thought... well, I thought.... oh, I don't know what I thought." She reached into her robes and pulled out the energy bearing rock from last night. "Here it is," she said, her voice thinned to little more than a whisper. "Here, take it. I don't want it anymore." She pressed it into Lilith's hand.

Lilith held Xenith in one arm, and the rock in the other hand. After a bit, she sighed and said softly, "So that's it. I thought it might be. You've been torturing yourself, and for what? A rock?"

Xenith's head drooped a bit, but she still shook it as she said, "no, not just that. For taking it when I didn't have any right to it. I guess I just thought I might use it myself someday, and it just seemed like, well, you wouldn't miss it...."

"You're right, I didn't miss it. I saw it in your robe when we were returning to the caravan last night."

Xenith stared up at Lilith, her jaw gaping in surprise. "But! Why didn't you say anything??"

"Why should I? I knew where it was when I wanted it, didn't I?"

Xenith's gaze dropped, and her ears flattened a bit. "Yeah, I guess you did at that," she said in a small tone.

"Of course I did. Really, Xenith, you didn't honestly think you could steal something from me without my noticing?" Xenith's huddled shoulders provided a pretty good answer to that, and Lilith laughed. "Believe me, " she said with real amusment in her tone, "there is absolutely no way you could conceal something like that from me. Even if we weren't linked I'd find out, but with it, I could tell what you did with my things even if I wasn't around when you did it."

"I didn't know you could read thoughts."

"I can't- not like you mean. I read emotions, and I'm able to pick up mental pictures or impressions as well, although it's a pretty disconnected and confusing way to try and make sense of things sometimes."

"Oh." Xenith hugged Lilith's side for a bit before continuing. "Could you- would you-- forgive me?"

"Forgive you? For what?"

"For... trying to steal it."

"Should I?" was the softly penetrating reply.

The fur along Xenith's back stood up in fear. "I guess not, " she whispered. "But I really wish you would."

Lilith laughed and hugged her closer. "Of course I do, cub. Now don't worry about it. Oh, another thing."

Xenith's eyes snapped back open as she felt the stone being pressed into her palm. "But I couldn't! I've already tried to take it once, why should I want it now?"

"It's not a matter of if you want it, it's a matter of me wanting you to have it. Go on, take it."

Xenith did so, although she held it so loosely that dropping it was a definite possibility. "I don't understand."

"Have you ever been kicked in the tail, vixen?" Xenith's hiss of disgust and shame brought a smile to Lilith's face as she continued, "falling off of a horse onto your rear amounts to the same thing. Believe me, I know- I found out the hard way." She sensed Xenith's moment of inward amusement, and flicked an ear gently with one finger. "Go on, Xenith, laugh. I admit it, it was funny. Everyone else around at the time thought so, too." As Xenith's small laugh bubbled out, Lilith continued. "But my point was what happened afterwards. The training master who was teaching me how to ride waited until I had gotten up and knocked some of the worst of the dust off." And bit back the expletives I wanted to say at the pain, she added silently to herself. "Then he told me to get back on. He said if the last thing I remembered about riding was failure, that I'd always expect it in the future, and that it would make me fail even when I didn't have to."

"Oh."

Silence. "Yes, Xenith, oh. Oh, so that's why I want you to have it back. I don't want you to fear having it simply because you didn't do it right the first time. I trust you with it, Xenith. If I hadn't, I would have asked for it back last night. I did seriously consider it then, and came to the same conclusion. Keep it safe, Xenith. It may come in very useful someday."

Xenith's eyes glistened as she put the rock back into her robe. "Thanks, ad-- Lilith."

"Of course." Another moment of silence followed while Lilith looked at Xenith with her magical senses. Xenith, do you realize that's the first time you called me by name when I didn't ask you to? she thought. But all she said was, "By the way, what on earth did Kors say to you that brought all this on? I noticed you feeling bad, but he really devastated you. What could he have said about you that would do that?"

"Well.... it really wasn't about me."

"Hmm?"

"It was about you. He started talking about how you'd just tricked everyone last night, and how you'd really found an old abandoned well instead. It made me so mad that you were being made fun of that I started to yell at him, but then I realized I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I was getting mad at him for mistreating you, but I'd done you wrong myself, so who was I to get so upset?"

Lilith laughed. She gave Xenith another hug, then held her out at arm's length and said, "someday, you are going to be a very perceptive magician."

"Huh?"

"You're going to be a good magician, Xenith. You're already starting to take the first step in sensing the moods of others."

"What's that?"

"Understanding your own." Xenith's ears twitched at the praise, and her small smile was a treasure to Lilith as she watched. I do believe we're going to get along fine, little vixen, she thought. At this rate, you're going to be solving your own problems almost as fast as I can point them out.

Later, when Xenith asked what happened when you sensed the life energy in a cord that ended in someone else, Lilith told her. When Xenith found out what it was for, her queasy stomach told her that Lilith had been right to brush it aside at first. She almost wished that she had done so now. Trust, she saw, was a two-edged weapon.