"Hesper, look at that cloud."
This is Hesper's earliest memory. She is three, standing in the garden with a stone in her hand.
She looks up at her mother, then the sky, trying to see what is special about this particular cloud.
"Pretty, mama."
Her mother looks down with eyes so far away that little Hesper somehow senses Cleia's longing for wings, for flight. Her druid mother spends many hours soaring on the wind as a hawk.

In the next memory she is five. Her father is explaining the LeaveBehind ceremony.
"When your mother transforms into a bird for the last time she will no longer recognize or remember us . That is why it is called LeaveBehind. A Druid must know what she is gaining but also what she is losing. She will become a bird. Just a bird."

A sudden pop from the bonfire brings Hesper to the present, another sort of LeaveBehind ceremony. They have built the fire as a memorial to Dunrick, slain in that horrid underground darkness by faceless stone demons. How she wishes her father was here to explain it all to her. A nudge from Elasha and she realizes her friends are looking at her expectantly. In Hesper's hand is not a stone but a clump of DruidDream mushrooms. She offers them around and looks back at the hissing flames. The glowing ashes dip and swirl like fiery moths.
She slips a mushroom under her tongue and closes her eyes.