Pink paw pad catching the razor edge of the page, Elain creased a lone feline finger between the divide. In an instant, the space of worlds, history, and eons slipped and moved aside, revealing the secrets of the next paged pair. With the book resting on her knees, her eyes danced to a rarity in story, design, and structure.

"A full art piece?" Elain inched closer to the pages, drinking in the details with such rapture that even her nose twinged with the scent of faded ink. How irregular.

A woman, adorned in garments ordained by the oracles, squatted with weathered hands gripping a sheathed sword and mighty spear. She gazed to the cover, her face angled and focused on some distant threat. Her pose exuded a strength of both body and mind in that silent, watchful patience. Even this figure's hair and fur seemed combed and poised for whatever struggle lay to pages past: a tragedy given the true threats lay behind the warrior to pages unknown.

Elain knew who this figure was, of course: seventy-two pages in, her mind hadn't been too terribly distracted to not recognize this wolf heroine at a glance.

Eloyda.

Chosen of the gods, slayer and soldier, divinely gifted and worldly tested, yet Elain felt a ping of regret. In that mired mess of thought, vision, and sight, she saw the figure on page soften in places, harden in others. She smiled as for a moment, the art woven into this window of adventure reflected that secret half-belief, that prized investment of reader and author: empathy and reflection. Eloyda's titanic struggles were her own, but to the woman reading on her windowsill as the lazy Mirabeu summer danced outside, she was Eloyda; or rather, she was for a brief moment as much a part of Eloyda as Eloyda was a budding part of herself.

Oh, to be a hero...

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Art by the masterly  morgdl