Powerful things...

Ariadne--or Airy, as she'll tell you to call her--was born in the kingdom of Deleo, a smaller kingdom in her realm, known for its lush forests. It was one of the leading producers of lumber. And, more importantly, it was home to dozens of nomadic tribes of Alastrians, a demonoid race native to the realm. Ariadne was born in the middle of a litter of twenty, to father Feofan--the pack's storyteller--and mother Rotspine. Being one of twenty made Ariadne something of an unremarkable child, with two noteworthy exceptions. The first was that she learned, at a reasonably early age, to secrete pheromones that could make her appear Human, a trait she shared with her mother and several other siblings. The second was that she had a talent for disobeying her mother's strict rules, often wandering just a little bit too close to the Human villages of Deleo for comfort.

Rotspine and Feofan had left their family group years before Ariadne's birth. The nature of their departure was mysterious to Ariadne, but it meant that they often received visitors from far-away places, such as the kingdom of Valeria, one of the bustling centers of commerce and culture. Ariadne's favorite visitor was her Uncle Tahafra, who would often bring little trinkets and wild tales about the way that the humanoids of the realm (Humans, Elves, and Darcus) lived. Like Rotspine and Ariadne, Tahafra possessed the ability to appear Human. He'd even gone a step further, severing his own wings in order to pass. His stories often filled Ariadne's little head with the idea of someday living and passing as a Human herself.

As it was, the Alastrians were ill-treated in the realm. Sorcerers would sometimes bind them as familiars. And hunters often illegally hunted them down for their hair. It was considered a luxury good in the realm, finer than silk and nearly twenty times as expensive. Most hunters outright killed Alastrians and scalped them. But there were some who settled for simple humiliation. When Ariadne was seven, one of her brothers, Lief, crossed paths with such hunters. They stripped him naked, shaved his head, and left him alone in the forest. Ariadne's family found him three days later, shivering and scared senseless, unable to speak or make eye contact for weeks. And the incident taught Ariadne, for the first time, how deeply dangerous it was to be Alastrian.

( Strangely, it didn't... )