She had never been a quiet child, laughing and talking and asking questions for days on end, to the exasperation of her brothers.

He misses her voice now, and as his brothers and he return to their feathered forms, she remains hunched over her piles of stinging nettles, hardly touching the berries and wild grasses they had gathered for her to eat.

He wants to tell her he loves her, they all love her, but his voice is the trumpeting of a swan, and when she looks up briefly, he knows she heard his love, just as they see her love in her injured fingers.