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Batur’s arms were a comfort to my aching body, and the gentle rock of his gait calmed me in a way I had never known. I cannot remember a time when either of my parents ever soothed me, and the big foreigner opened me to a world that I did not know existed.

“Little Rion,” he said to me as he ambled towards my mother’s home, “you realize that your mother calls you an idiot with good reason? Look at the forest around you. Even the smallest of her creatures knows when it is in da...