Synopsis: Shadows Dance With the Wind

Part One: NaNo 2008
R.'s mother was dead. As was her tiny brother, who lived for less time than a butterfly.

She gained some understanding from an encounter with her mother’s spirit. There was an uncharacteristically complacent puma that she suspected was the spirit Puma and not a real cat at all. When B. attacked her, she surprised herself by just using her power to force him away.

She no longer felt like a child, but an adult. A shaman. Or almost a shaman. She’d seen the spirit of a dead person, spent time with an animal spirit, warded off an attack without causing harm. T., the group's shaman, was saying she should leave the group.

Part Two: NaNo 2009
She knew she should go study with the shaman S., but that would leave her father and older brother in their grieving. Without her to help. Shaman T. had been injured trying to save R.'s mother; he was trying to hide it. How could she abandon them, a group grieving, short on women to gather, with a barely functioning shaman? And if she left, would she ever return?