I had never given much thought into which part of myself I liked most.

My mother had told me my entire life that my hair was pretty, but I did not know if that was enough to consider it as my favorite. Most of my body, I never truly thought about. My back, my knees, my elbows, ankles, toes, sides, that never really did enough to be present in the front of my mind.

Anna liked my eyes, but I was nearly certain that Anna liked all of me.

The mother seals on my navel and right palm went a long way into me not liking my stomach or what should've been my dominant hand. Like the seals, the places on my upper legs and arms that were still scarred from Mother Azza's punishment or normally so far out of sight that I didn't think of them until I was undressed before they began to itch.

Even so, when presented with the question by whatever small demon that Bru proved to be I didn't think I disliked any part of me enough to part with it and I liked each part enough to never wish to.

"I'd rather not say, I don't wanna make either of them jealous." I said weakly as I slowly backed away from the empty black eye that stared up at me with obvious hunger.

The warden chuckled. "Careful, Bru. She nearly turned Bruce into a plucked chicken earlier because he looked at it wrong. She's no easy prey."

"Are you certain," Bru said in the sticky sweet voice of a girl she spoken in before. It was breathy, light, and made me feel like my skin was going to crawl off my bones and back out of the cave to get away from it. "My teeth are very sharp. You would hardly feel the thing and think about how much easier your life would be without having to worry about two arms. Please let me help you, my little morsel. I would owe you a favor."

Despite how often it seemed to happen in the short part of my life that I could remember, I did not enjoy speaking to things that I could not see. Let alone something that was actively trying to convince me to let it eat my least favorite arm.

"Warden? Is there a light down here?" I asked aloud, pressing my back into the rungs of the ladder, I had fallen off of only moments before.

"No, I'm afraid not. Not for a ways anyways. Can't you make one of those werelights? Hasn't little Seram taught you how to do that yet?" The bearded man replied. He took a long drag off of his burner, and the orange light of its end brightened momentarily before dimming and then burning out completely.

Bru hummed a pleased sounding hum as her rough skin dragged across the front of my ankles once again. "Oh, so she's a sorceress. That's why she smells so good. Morty if it weren't for the sour smelling smoke. Hanging around her, I don't think I would be able to resist."

She let out an unnerving peel of giggles. I knew she must be a familiar, but I had never met one that I liked less, not even the one who had served a sorcerer and was content with dragging me back to their spire with its teeth.

I couldn't take it.

"Everyone keeps acting surprised that I don't know how to make a werelight, but not once has anyone offered to teach me." I said through a frustrated sigh.

The warden laughed his good laugh in the darkness, but I didn't find it nearly as pleasant as I had all the times before.

"You mean to tell me that you can nearly blow apart one of the toughest familiars I've ever met, but you don't know how to make a werelight? I'm going to have to have a talk with little Seram about how poorly you girls are being prepared for real life." He continued, with what sounded like real frustration of his own in his voice.

"Can you make one?" I asked.

The warden let out a sharp breath. "No, but I know how to. Being able to do what I've seen you do and not be able to make a little light is like learning how to fly before you know how to stand. The firework you made, can you make a small one?"

"Yes." I answered.

"And when you did, whatever it was that you did to Durath, you had to hold your focus, right? Combine the two, make a small firework and hold it." he explained.

There was an uncountable amount of questions I wanted to ask, but I was more tired of being in the dark than I was curious. So with my aura pressed against my unsealed palm, I thought of Anna and let the tiny azure working spring up through my channel.

Every other time I had ever done it, that was where the working ended. What happened with my aura after it was channeled was beyond my control, but with the warden's advice, I kept my mind, focused on my power and tried to imagine it glowing in the dark forever.

It sputtered and flickered a finger's length above my palm, but it did not burst or fade. Almost convinced that I had succeeded on my first try, I caught sight of what Bru truly was in the flashes of my blue light and my focus broke.

I had only ever seen something like her once before.

It had been enough.

A wide mouth filled with teeth that were meant to rip and tear, a body that was built for speed and only speed, and fins that would've allowed her to cut through water like a knife had she been submerged in it, Bru was a shark through and through.

Jotuza, the behemoth that I had seen in the memories of a sorceress whose name I could no longer remember, had been inexplicably larger than the hungry familiar at my feet. Even so, every terrifying thing about him, Bru shared.

My light winked out, and I pressed myself against the wrongs of the ladder so hard that I thought it would leave indentations in my spine.

"Almost, almost, almost! Try again, I'm sure you'll get it this time." The warden cheered.

The excitement in his voice was enough for me to swallow the fever that had risen up in my throat, and bring my power back to my palm.

I thought of Anna, but that was the easy part. Alone in my mind, I imagine my little blue werelight shining out long after the stars in the sky and the rising sun had been taken by darkness. I thought of my light being the only light that was left in all of chaos and focused on my will to keep it shining.

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The little firework lit up from my palm, flickering just as my first had. I had not let my eyes drift from where Bru stood at my feet, and though the sight of her nearly scared my hair white, my will could not be shaken a second time.

I painted the darkness away and filled the cave with my azure light, my working working as I had meant it to.

"There you go! Maybe I should go play precept and little Seram should come and see what real work is like." The warden laughed, a wide smile shining out from his dark beard.

"Please." I agreed.

What I had just done would've normally sent me into a triumphant shout, but I was still very aware of the predator that was running circles around the warden and I's feet.

"No, no, no, I couldn't. Besides, you need to learn a little more about being a sorceress before I can feel good about training you to be the warden." He said with an easy sigh.

Bru, running on the four short legs that I was nearly certain most sharks did not have, stopped her endless looping, and pressed her snout against my hand that held Anna's gifts.

"So young, so tender, so quick to scare, you would make a much better meal than you would a warden. We can wait until you fall asleep, you won't even know it's happening." She said, the roughness of her skin feeling like it would cut me if she moved much quicker.

The warden reached down and scooped her up like she was an oversized cat. "No one's getting eaten. You haven't since you got here and we aren't starting today."

Bru struggled against his hold, or it may have been happy wiggles, but she settled into his arms after a moment.

"You are bleeding, Morty. Why must you tempt me so?" She asked in feigned sadness.

The warden rubbed her snout with his palm and played a very dangerous game of keep away with his hand. Every snap of her terrifying teeth sent visions of torn flesh and breaking bone through my mind.

"Because, I have made a blood pact to keep her safe. And that means all of her. Both her arms, both her legs, from head to toe, all of her. Understand?" The warden asked.

Bru snapped her jaws and almost took off the warden's pinky. "What a shame. I will play nice, but if you ever change your mind, girl, I will be happy to help you lose some weight.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could assure the walking and talking shark that there would never be a day that I would park with one of my limbs, something bit me.

My werelight burst.

I snatched my bitten finger to my chest.

The smoldering end of the burner I had been holding bounced across the ground in showers of orange embers.

"Right. Should've warned you about that. Sorry." The warden laughed.

I didn't think it was very funny at all, and I could feel the wound in my tongue as I sucked my finger to find some kind of relief.

When the pain began to fade, I cast my werelight once again and scowled the bearded man with all the fury I could muster.

"Easy, easy, easy. How is it that I'm holding a shark and I'm more scared of you?" He said through his continued laughing, my scowl evidently not strong enough to affect him.

I crossed my arms and turned away from him. "How do you even know about werelights? Aren't you just a special babysitter?"

"Fair enough," The warden nodded as he put Bru back down on the ground. "I am. But, when you've been married to a sorceress as long as I have, you pick up a thing or two."

I turned back from turning away from him and stepped closer. "You're married?"

"For so long that I don't remember how long it's been." He said with a wide smile.

I cleared my throat. "Is it, is it Precept Seram?"

The laugh he laughed echoed so loudly in the azure cave, that I thought it would bring it collapsing down onto us.

"No," He wheezed. "Little Seram is like a daughter to me."

Bru circled around his legs twice before she turned her head and closed her jaws around the warden's right leg.

"Come on now! You can't do that!" The warden shouted as he knelt down and rolled up his pants.

A perfect impression of the tips of all of Bru's uncountable teeth stood on his skin like a tattoo, but there was no blood.

"It was only a little bite, hardly a nibble. You should be more careful about who you call your daughter in front of me." Bru giggled and rubbed herself against the warden's other leg.

The warden pushed her away in a way that did not seem mean spirited. "If you're jealous, remember that you're the only daughter I have to worry about being bitten by."

"Why are you here? Why did you bring her? Just to make my life hard?" Bru asked, her empty black eye flicking over to me and sending yet another shiver down my spine.

The warden walked further into the cave as he answered her. "We've come to deal with the thing that keeps trying to steal your food. She is here because I think she can succeed where I have failed."

"I have begged you to let me rid us of the thief, Morty. If you would just tell me yes, it would never bother you again." Bru begged, her long swishing back and forth like Sam's did when he was annoyed.

I followed after them, being with something terrifying that I could see was much better than the horrors my mind would create if I was left alone, but my werelight did not.

It hung there, completely unmoving, and would have until my focus strayed or my power ran out.

Just as I had done with Durath, I thought about the weights that I had been moving under the watchful bubbles of Precept Seram and brought those lessons to bear on my light. It streaked forward and snapped still back above my palm. With no small effort, I kept it there as I followed the warden and Bru deeper into the caves.

"If I told you yes, you would try to kill it. That would be like killing Clarus or Taloo. You wouldn't do that, it's not fair. We just need to show it that it's safe, make it feel like itself again. You remember how things were for you when you first came here." The warden said down to the shark.

"I almost starved." Bru sighed. Some of the sickly sweetness had faded out of her voice, and I remembered why all of the familiars were on Silkcradle in the first place.

Craving the taste of my flesh or not, Bru had lost who she was bonded with.

It did not make my skin crawl any less when I looked at her, but I needed to keep it closer to the front of my mind.

Losing Sam, Anna, my mother, or anyone else I cared about, I couldn't imagine it. From Taloo to Bru, they had all suffered something I would rather die than go through, and I needed to remember that.

I don't know how long or how far we walked, but my werelight stayed together all the way until I stopped needing it. The cave had grown brighter around us, and a low roaring sound filled my ears as we reached where it opened into a much larger space.

"This, is the drowning cave." The warden said with arms stretched out wide.

Waterfalls of every size, shape, and height littered the walls of the massive space we had come too. The ground fell away at my feet and plummeted to a pool of water that looked much smaller than I knew it truly was. Cold air, like what The River Eae carried down the mountains with it, blew against the thin green dress I wore.

I wrapped my arms around myself as I let my working turn to dust.

"Somewhere down there," The warden pointed. "We'll find what we are looking for.

"How do you do it?" I asked.

"Do what? Get down there? Well, I would normally jump, but we'll be taking the safe route." The warden answered.

"No," I shook my head, finding the words to ask a question that would not leave me. "Get married. How do you get married?"

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