Mara looked at her mate and she to him. Both knew what must be done. Taking the child up from the remnants of her clothes, the female gryphon tucked her against her feathery breast. For her part, Sandra was too lost and tired to struggle, not that she wanted to. The smell of the gryphons shifted into her young mind along with the warmth, imprinting with their strength and beauty.
They took flight, and the child was settled in their nest. Over the coming weeks, she was fed and bathed, given feathers around her body for warmth, and raised as if she were a gryphon child. Over time, the little girl began to forget her human words as the gryphons taught her their ways. She knew she wasnt like them, but she came to be in other ways, clothing herself in feathers, using bark to immitate scales on her legs and arms and wearing a mask the gryphons made for her.
By the time she was six, the child was of age to venture to the world. Climbing down from her nest, she stole out into the woods to seek what lay beyond