One hand stole to her stomach, rubbing it through the thin fabric of her shift. Underneath her callused fingers the baby shifted, lazily rolling from one side to the other. "Little one," she crooned, putting down her mug and placing her other hand on her belly. "Soon, little one."

She glanced down into her half-full mug, and then out at the tall straight pines of the forest that surrounded their tiny cabin. A small smile quirked on her face, and raising her mug to her lips she murmured into it, "Spirits of the forest, send me an omen for my child before the last drop of tea is gone!" And then her eyes raised even as she sipped at her tea, searching the forest. Would she see a winter hare, ensuring that her child would be fleet of foot? A hawk, ensuring that her child would be a stern hunter?

Sipping at her tea, she awaited her omen, as she did almost every morning.

She had just taken the last cooling mouthful and started the slow process of standing up when the explosion of sound reached her ears. Out from the woods burst one of the village's prize bulls, bleeding and torn, one of its horns broken off; behind it ran several of the villagers, bearing weapons and ropes. They saw her, and shouted. And the bull saw her, as well.

She stared at the bull in white-eyed terror, too frightened to move even as it snorted and bore down on her, its tiny eyes wild and frantic. An axe flew from behind, and it crumpled, its horns almost touching the porch on which she stood.

The mug dropped from her nerveless fingers to bounce off the porch, and two drops of cooled tea flew from it to sink into the wooden slats and vanish.