An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
A woman known only as Lilith, daughter of the Magistrate, lives deep in the woods. To most people's knowledge, she lives alone, her parents constantly travelling to other settlements for some reason or another. Everyone knows about the wolf whose territory sits between her home and the rest of the world. Most young people assume she's probably dead, eaten by the wolf long ago. Hunters go out almost routinely, trying to cull the rampant beating of the wood's heart. Very few come back. Everyone also knows about the woman who lives with her mother at the forest's edge, home just visible through the trees from the main road. She's a dead man walking, really, going out into the woods so often (so, so often). Everyone is holding their breath, wondering when her body will realise her heart stopped beating. She is no corpse yet, but she may as well be for all that she's living on the wolf's borrowed time.














