Character

Morgon: “there was a woman of Herun, a hill woman named Arya, who collected animals. One day she found a tiny black beast she couldn’t name. She brought it into her house, fed it, cared for it. And it grew. And it grew. Until all her other animals fled from the house, and it lived alone with her, dark, enormous, nameless, stalking her from room to room while she lived in terror, unfree, not knowing what to do with it, not daring to challenge it”
Raederle: "That has nothing to do with me.... What happened to the woman?"
Morgon:. "She died of fear.”
Raederle: “And the animal? What was it?”
Morgon: “No one knew. It wailed for seven days and seven nights at her grave, in a voice so full of love and grief that no one who heard it could sleep or eat. And then it died, too.”
The riddle of Arya, as told by Morgon to Raederle.
(The riddle-master trilogy, by Patricia McKillip)