Mererid, daughter of Vanw, hails from the village of Root's Oath, in the Brecheliant Greenwood, in the land of Ynys Cantrevi. Root's Oath would be a fairly normal hunter-forager settlement, trading meat and skins for goods they can't produce themselves, were it not for that fact that it is solely home to the wolf-clothed, people with the ability to emerge in the form of a wolf while their human bodies sleep.
Mererid has always been one of her village's best hunters, and never so much as ventured to the nearest city, but when she's attacked by an unkillable beast out of a thousand-year-old legend, her search for answers leads her to leave everything she's ever known behind.
Note: name spellings are based on Middle Welsh, hence the non-standard orthography for Modern Welsh.
“And where might you be from, lass?” the innkeeper asked. “Don't see many womenfolk dressed like you in these parts.”
Mererid shrugged. “I'm a hunter from Root's Oath, in the Greenwood. Everyone dresses like me there. No time to sit around sewing gowns.”
A man's voice came from behind her. “The Greenwood? Heard there's an awful lot of wolf-clothed living there, outlaws and cattle thieves all.”
Anest had warned her that cityfolk weren't nearly as friendly to the wolf-clothed as the villagers farther out from the great kingdoms, but Mererid hadn't quite expected to run into that so soon. She turned around, raising her arms in a gesture of innocence, and to show off the shearling lining of her wambais. “Only furs I'm wearing are sheep, sir,” she said, to a murmur of laughter from somewhere deeper into the common room. The man who had spoken up glowered at her, but turned back to his drink, and Mererid realized rather belatedly that she was lucky he hadn't made a crack about a wolf in sheep's clothing.