Excitement bubbled in her tiny chest. The boy wasn't backing down, and something about that sent shockwaves of dangerous joy through her dark body. Did he not know who she was? Was she not Tae, the little ghost, killer of monsterous and keeper of bones? Daughter of the Mother of Companions and the Wildfire? Her pale eyes flashed with a happy thrill. Tae had nothing to prove really, but she wanted to have something to prove; wanted a chip on her shoulder, an enemy, or a cause to defend just like her mother had. She and Grusha had an armies worth of bones which could be turned into a monster at any moment, but nothing to use it on.

She would not start a war over a bird, but the excitement in the back of her throat was too juicy to simply swallow back down.

"Does it?" She purred, stepping forward. As she did so, two things happened.

The first, was that she allowed her own magic to become apparent. Her body began to bleed away, her excitement becoming too much. She looked like a girl well on her way to becoming a ghost: her silhouette was now white and nearly see-through. Spirits appeared on either side of her as well, taking no real form, but looking more like translucent opalesque smears in the air. Her white eyes looked at the colt with some sort of during amusement. Come and take it, if you think it's yours those eyes seemed to say, but there was real amusement there - and almost no hostility. She truly was enjoying this.

The second thing which happened, was that Mal and Hel began to advance. Both of the black canines were larger than the hyena pup, and both barred their own row of glistening white teeth. Mal, the older of the two, suddenly produced an illusion of a massive lion. The beast roared and focused its attention upon the Hyena, licking its lips. Wolves might never have been a hyena's enemy, but lions certainly were. At the same time, Hel's markings began to glow dangerously as hellfire began to sizzle around him. The pair - a trio if you included the lion - stepped forward menacingly, and Hel lowered his jaws to snap up the broken bird.

The girl's wings spread and her mandible jaw lifted as if in triumph. And, if she was being truthful, she had him to thank for it.

Didn't she?