MY MOTHER, THE HAGAs my mother reluctantly submitted to the ravages of old age her memories of the past became increasingly vague. She even had trouble remembering me, although I had always been a very dutiful son. I suppose I was too insignificant to be well-remembered, because I was the least talented of all our kind. That has always been the curse of the vargr-folk; as each generation spent its magic, wantonly or not, there was so much less to pass on to the next. Had I been born a mere hundred years later I’d have been no more than human.
By the time she died even my mother was only a little more than human, but old age is more than the creeping assault of wrinkles and brittle bones; it transforms the mind as well as the body. As her memories of the past faded by degrees into the mist
