Clever Speech

Wolves and Panthers and Dragons, oh my! Matushka Ursula Bloom wears many hats. She is the wife of the local Eastern Orthodox priest and mother of three grown sons. She is a retired Marine, a graduate of the Naval Academy. She works as the local probation officer because their church is too small to provide a living wage to her husband and she needs to bring in an income. She is the Ardaradatut'yan khosnak, the traditional adjudicator between the various factions of shapeshifters in the area. A middle of the night phone call reveals that Ursula has to try to keep a drunken bar brawl between two of the werepanthers and a weredragon after a police officer, a werewolf, is seriously injured, and the bar owned by a werepig is burned down, from becoming an all out war between several factions. It's not a problem one would expect to find in a picturesque Illinois river town that is the county seat. Besides, their bishop is coming in a few days to consecrate the church campus their small mission church was given. The last thing she needs is to have civil disorder when Vladika is in town. As usual, the problems come not as one crisis after another, but crisis upon crisis all of which seem to be interrelated, in this small town where everyone seems to know everyone else's business.