Alikne'ar had known nothing but solitude since it reached maturity.

Where others of its kind formed groups, stuck together, and created homes, it was alone, and lived in a tree's hollow remains, where once crows had nested. It adorned itself with the feathers left behind and remembered the days when it had similarly adorned itself with its mother's molted scales.

Its mother was gone now, and it had been alone a very long time.

Alikne'ar, in the others' eyes, was useless. It could not hunt, it did not wish to produce offspring, and it was not skilled with healing or caring for the sick and elderly. It was only dead weight.

Dead weight will always be cast away.

Alikne'ar understood this.

So it lived alone and accepted the loneliness as its penance. The days passed quietly and slowly. It ventured into the bogs and the forests and fed on berries that grew from bushes and vines. It drank from a small, cheerful rill. And it returned home to sleep.

Today was different.

Nearby, beyond the bogs and the forests, no more than half a day's journey, was a human village. Sometimes Alikne'ar settled in trees close to it and listened to the sounds of the humans. They, like its own kind, were social creatures and lived in groups. When it sat and listened to their sounds, their conversations and laughter, it could imagine what life would look like if it had been able to stay with its kind.

It had seen many human young in the village. Sometimes they strayed into the woods and it would become a fox or a raven and nudge them gently homeward. There was one child whom it had frequently helped back to the village.

The child was back.

But they hadn't come here of their own volition.

Upon the young one's forehead was a mark drawn with charcoal and lamb's blood. The humans drew this sort of mark on sacrificial offerings.

This child, like Alikne'ar, had been abandoned.

Alikne'ar took a human form. Its skin mottled, black and grey, patched with scales. In some places its body became only threads of flesh that wove into something limb-like. Its face had no features, only hollow sockets for eyes and a wound of a mouth. With these unfamiliar hands, Alikne'ar took the child in its arms and wiped the mark from their forehead.

"You will be called Lietni'en."

The child did not cry.

It surprised Alikne’ar even more than the sacrificial mark, more than the way the forest itself had leaned inward towards the stones where the child was left. Humans wept easily, loudly, like birds announcing the presence of danger. The boy only trembled, breath shallow, eyes much too wide for such a small face.

When the name was spoken, something old and careful stirred.

“You will be called Lietni’en.”

The words comforted the child like a blanket. Not with warmth, but with weight. With meaning. The trembling slowed down greatly.

Alikne’ar carried him away from the stones he rested on before the forest could remember what those stones were for.

Alikne'ar did not take the path back to the hollow tree. That place was barren with old grief, a past that was not fit for a child, a grief that could seep into bones. Instead, Alikne'ar went deeper, where the bog darkened and the roots tangled thick as sleeping serpents. There was a rise there, similar to a hill, crowned by an elder spirit that was departed long ago by lightning. Beneath its roots was a dry pocket where the earth hummed softly, the way it did when it approved.

Alikne’ar knelt and set the child down.

Up close, the sacrificicial mark was cruder than it had first appeared. The lamb’s blood had been stretched with water. The charcoal smudged by a shaking hand. This was not a ceremony done with reverence. It was done with a sense of fear.

Lietni’en watched as Alikne’ar’s unfamiliar fingers brushed the last of the marks away. The child’s eyes tracked every movement, solemn and unblinking.

“You are not broken,” Alikne’ar said, though it was not fully sure whether it was speaking to the child or to itself. “They told themselves you were.”

The child’s mouth opened.

“Monster?” Lietni’en asked, the word small and careful.

Alikne’ar paused.

It had been called many things. Useless. A burden. Wrongly shaped. It had learned that names could wound worse than teeth.

“Yes,” it said at last. “But not the kind that eats children.”

Lietni’en considered this, then nodded, as though this was a reasonable distinction to make.

“Will they come back?” the child asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

Alikne’ar tilted its head, listening—not with ears, but with the old senses that tasted intention on the air. The village was already quieter than it should have been. The bells would ring soon, to announce to themselves that the offering had been made. After that, there would be waiting. Hoping.

“Soon,” Alikne’ar said. "Not for you, but for what they think you brought.”

Lietni’en’s small hands clenched in the fabric of their tunic. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Alikne’ar said, more sharply than it meant to. The word wrong reminded it too closely to dead weight. “They were afraid, and fear is lazy. It looks for something small to carry it a great distance.”

The child leaned forward then, resting his forehead against Alikne’ar’s chest. The physical contact startled them both - Alikne’ar’s body was not made for this shape, for this closeness. Its form rippled, threads tightening to keep from unraveling.

Slowly, carefully, it wrapped its arms around Lietni’en.

Something shifted.

Not healed. Not fixed. But acknowledged.

Alikne’ar had lived a long time without being needed. It had convinced itself this was its virtue. Its penance, in order to maintain balance.

Now the forest hummed louder, insistent.

“You cannot go back,” Alikne’ar said.

“I don’t want to,” Lietni’en replied immediately, frightened. “They said the hill was hungry.”

Alikne’ar’s hollow eyes darkened, turning aggressive.

“The hill is old,” it said. “Old things are often mistaken for hungry ones.”

Footsteps sounded in the distance—human, uncertain, carried on the bog’s damp breath.

Alikne’ar rose, the child still in its arms. Its shape shifted, bones remembering other arrangements. Feathers pushed through skin. Scales dulled and smoothed. The forest bent, making space for the pair.

“Hold tight,” it told Lietni’en.

The child did.

Behind them, the stones waited, patient as they had always been. Ahead, the deep woods opened—not kind, but honest.

For the first time since its mother died, Alikne’ar did not walk alone.

And far from the village, where bells rang for a mercy that would never answer, something ancient signaled a different accounting altogether.