DaisyIt isn't that he goes to sleep in his bed at home and wakes up somewhere else. It isn't that simple, it isn't that detached. He is watching some movie, some old thing that he found in his Recently Watched queue in Netflix, but it's nothing he's ever watched. Must have been Devon, curled up with one of her old movies. It's called The Court Jester, and it's absurd. There's a jester pretending to be an outlaw and there's a baby with a birthmark and a neurotic semi-suicidal princess and a witch who can hypnotize people and there's even a black knight. Funny, though.
He's in his chair, reclined and leaning back, watching it play out for whatever reason he has tonight: maybe he misses her. Maybe he's bored. Maybe, secretly, he likes the opening musical number. But he's watching it, listening to some party scene going on, and his eyes drift closed.
No one can help that happening.
--
When he opens them, it seems darker. He's leaning, but not back, and not in some comfortable recliner. He's hunched over a table, sitting on a hard bench. First thing he sees when he opens his eyes is what's left of a thick stew spooned onto a trencher of heavy, stale bread. Not much left of either. What smells like beer is --
holy shit the smells. The people. The beer, the food, the wood, the shit somewhere, the hay, the animals, the sweat, the foulness. He's assaulted quickly by a headache from the onslaught of unfamiliar and pungent scents, even before his eyes have had time to adjust to the dimness of a room lit only by fire.
Fires in iron-encased pits in the middle, fire in torches along the walls of the great hall, flickering off the edges of tapestries hung to keep the warmth in. To either side of him are others dressed just like he is: the woolen hose, the leather boots, linen shirt, woolen doublet. He's sweating into it, but he knows
better than the aketon and better than mail. He knows, too, that this dark blue doublet is the finest item of clothing he owns, trimmed in the silver-brown fur of some beast he hunted and ate.
Lots of people at this feast. Up at the baron's table there is the remains of a roasted swan, feeding the baron, his wife, his sons and daughters.
Van der ValkWolf did miss the girl. That's why he watched that stupid movie. Not consciously, not in a way he'd pinpoint to himself -- but that's why.
Days since he's seen her. Much of her, anyway. Days since that strange night, that encounter in the bathtub, so hot, and then so fucking awkward. Because he got off and she didn't. Because he went off half-cocked, so fast, and she wasn't even close. No, that wasn't really why. He knows it. Still feels like that sometimes. Feels shameful.
Feels guiltful, too. The separation; her in the shower and him outside. Slamming doors. The inevitable rejection, one and then the other, and then him in his room. Her in hers.
Didn't see much of her after that. Sometimes a glimpse of her coming down the stairs in her boots. Out the door while he was still behind the breakfast counter, eating his scrambled eggs. Sometimes the sound of the door opening late at night. Girl coming up the stairs scentless, smelling of cheap cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol.
--
Movie on his Netflix. Must have been the girl. So he watches it.
--
Darker when he opens his eyes again. Hot, the air stuffy and claustrophobic with the foulness of a hundred unwashed bodies. All their organic detritus. Smoke, too, in an enclosed space.
Rough bench under him. Rough table in front of him. Rough trencher of bread, the edges broken off in his rough hands, dipped and eaten with his rough stew. There are words in his mind that he didn't know he knew. Aketon. Doublet. Pauldron. Mail.
Wolf drops the hunk of stale bread in his hand. Gets up off the bench. Casts about, scowling, too startled and too confused to have the presence of mind to blend.
DaisyA few look up when he rises: big thing like him. They are drunk. He realizes he is a bit drunk; the room spins. The smoke doesn't help. Doesn't fall, though. It's late enough in the night that no one is truly startled by his sudden rise. People have to piss, after all. They go back to their conversations. He knows words: could be English. Could be speaking Ancient Greek for all he knows, but he understands it all the same.
This isn't Ancient Greece.
The Baron is staring at him. The Baron who has a regal nose and a sharp jawline. Eyes as clear blue as day and hair a shocking white-gold. Scent of Falcon on him, and on those at his table: the lovely young wife, each of the children, even a few of their closests servants. The Baron's eyes watch him carefully, but not with ferocity. Perhaps a touch of wariness.
Suddenly there is a young boy by Rafael's side. Darker of hair but with the Baron's pale eyes: a bastard. Smells like the tribe all the same, though. No hair on his chin yet but tall for his age, broad of shoulder and straight-limbed. Good teeth. He is dressed more simply than Rafael, but his over-tunic is the same deep blue as the fur-hemmed doublet.
"Sir --?" he says, questioning without leading. What is needed. More subtly: Too drunk?
Van der ValkWolf lurched out of his seat, really. Drunk. Didn't realize he was drunk. His balance stays with him, though. That much is the same. So much is the same, really: he feels like the same person. Just different clothes. Different words in his head. Different memories, maybe, patchy as they are.
That's a Baron. That's a Baroness. Those are their children, trueborn sons and daughters, little lords and ladies all. They wear yellow and they wear sky-blue. Yellow's an expensive dye, though not so expensive as red, as purple. Blue, especially the dark blue on his chest, is cheap. Still costs something, though. Still better than the drab plainness of undyed wool. Means he's not wealthy, but he's not penniless either. Means something too that he could afford a garment not only for himself but for the stripling boy rallying to his side.
Means something too that they wear the same color. Means they're on the same side. Should be, anyway.
"Come outside." It's not so much a decision made as a reflexive answer. Wolf starts walking. Hounds under the table snapping for scraps slink out of his way. Farther down the table he goes, drunker and shabbier the people get.
DaisyThe Baron, the Baroness -- he knows her name before he remembers the baron's. Edeva. They changed it, when she was almost old enough to marry. Something else when she was born. Something simple. He knows because he was a boy when she was born, when they introduced him to his new cousin. Even then they knew how pretty she would be, they could tell how pure she would be. The beauty, however, would be more useful in arranging an auspicious union with neighboring lands, one that would strengthen the hold of the tribe on this region.
Edeva is not the mother of a few of those children. The two youngest at the table are hers, and the baby that isn't in the hall. The baron's first wife died three years ago. Her children will not be the first heirs, but that's all right. The baron is also kin of Falcon; he is ferociously fond of Edeva, but he has two sons already from his first marriage. They will inherit his lands and title
unless somehow the relationship grows sour, or something happens to Edeva.
But that is why he is here, isn't it? At least part of the reason. If anything happens to Edeva or the baron does not do right by the Van der Valks, something may very well happen to those two sons. Torn apart by a wild animal, perhaps. Lost on a hunting expedition. That is what is expected of him, should it be necessary, but it's been three years. The two young men have gone on multiple hunting trips with their stepmother's cousin. They are quite fond of Rafael, and he of them. They are old enough to know they are all kin; they are young enough that they do not realize that their strongest protector is also the greatest threat to their lives.
Would be, even if he did not represent a subtle warning to keep the baron in line.
--
The hard thing is: in three years, he has come to respect the baron, too. The shadow of what may be, what should never be, is dim and distant. He protects these lands, for they contain his kin: his cousin Edeva, her children, others related far more distantly. The baron himself, and the baron's bastard, given to Rafael as a squire last year and named -- he knows now -- Blake. He has land here himself, close to the castle, right in its shadow.
If he were not a wolf, he would be seated closer to their table. He might live in the castle with them. If he were not a wolf, he would likely be married to a young wife of his own. Possibly some cousin or sister or even daughter of the baron. He would be openly and robustly favored.
As it is, there are nights when he is lucky to be allowed in the keep. There are nights when the only one brave enough to come near him is Blake, and even Blake's hands shake on those nights when he pours wine or serves fish. Good boy, though. Snaps to when Rafael says to come outside. Doesn't question. Follows along a few paces behind as dogs jerk out of their way. They leave through the main door, and the baron and baroness watch but do not send anyone after him. There are some freedoms his nature affords him; this is one.
--
They walk outside the great hall into the gallery. A few servants duck away, scurry much like the dogs did. Blake is behind him. It's just as dark here, as dim, but easier to breathe. "Outside the keep, sir?"
He knows how cold it is.
Van der Valk"I -- no."
They're twenty paces from the heavy doors to the great hall. Here the wolf slows. Fewer torches out here. Deeper shadows. Servants leave them be, but wolf is wary of how sound travels in these stony halls. How far, how wide, how unexpectedly. There are places in every keep where you might stand in a spot, exactly so, and hear words whispered half a hall away. The servants always know where.
Wary, the wolf paces in place. Back and forth, eyes everywhere. Then he stops. Puts his back to the wall, folds his arms over his chest. That deep blue doublet.
"Too much drink," he mutters. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Tucks his hand in the crook of the other elbow. Levels a stare at the boy. His squire. Squire, jesus. Pieces of another life, a stranger's memories slowly unfurling in his mind. Edeva his cousin. The Baron her husband. The children, some who share his cousin's blood and some who do not. All his wards. Some his unwitting prey, also.
Maybe. Could be.
"Head swimming," wolf adds, roughly. "Remind me. What are we feasting for?"
DaisyBlake does not nod sympathetically or wince at the truth. Too much drink. He cocks his head to the side, hands at his sides. Those pale eyes widen slightly when Rafael admits he doesn't even remember what they're feasting for. He takes a measured breath and says: "The coming spring, Sir."
His brow furrows. He lowers his voice. "The rites in the wood, Sir," he says even more quietly, as though to remind his lord of --
yes. The rites. The seven trials, the pantomimes of masked participants hidden away from the Christians. The reawakening of spring, lest it forget to return. He goes, every night, to watch and guard over these rites. Least he can do. He was not chosen to be one of the seven wolves who are on their quest. The true rite.
Van der Valk"Yes, of course." He remembers now. Knows now. Inherits the memories now? What are the words appropriate to this situation? Wolf gives his head a short, hard shake. Then jerks it toward the doors to the hall.
"Go back in. Eat. I'm going to get some air."
DaisyThey wear undyed robes in the woods, or go naked. They wear masks to hide their faces, sometimes hoods. They put on gloves made to look like claws and he knows of kin in other villages, other lands, who have been slaughtered for treating this like a game, like a play, coming drunk and acting like fools. They pretend to be what their cousins truly are. They believe that if they participate in this world they will keep their fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers safe in the underworld.
He knows that isn't true. He does not tell them.
Outside he knows it is cold, would be shockingly cold to his modern senses. It's spring (technically, astronomically: spring is a few days hence), but there is a fine layer of frost on the grass. The moon is high but only a crescent; if it were full or even gibbous he would not be in the castle. He would be roaming quite far indeed, leaving a bloody wake of completed hunts behind him. He would be with the wolf-pack past the edges of his own land, the one that knows him as their lord and alpha in a far less complicated way, though not a one of them is wolf-kin of any tribe. Just wolves.
Inside he feels stifled. But not to the killing edge. The drink has dulled him and the food has sated him but the memories of two lives at once has him tilted. Blake is watching him very carefully.
Another squire to another knight would offer cloak, ready a horse, ask: Alone, sir? but Blake knows what he is, and what his knight is. He will make himself scarce so no one asks him where his master is. He will lie and cover and perhaps even take Rafael's horse out for a ride himself, wearing Rafael's cloak, so that none will have evidence that his lies were just that. Blake is a good squire. Blake is a savvy kinsman. Rafael realizes that one day, because Blake is a bastard, he will do right by him to find him a wife. Not one worth the station of a baron's son but a good wife, one who can lift Blake's name a bit if possible.
If Blake lives to be old enough to marry. If he doesn't become a knight, himself.
"Sir," is all Blake says, nodding his head in obedience, departing.
Van der ValkSquire's footsteps recede into the distance. Somewhere, servants are scurrying, scurrying, serving. Wind howls through the cracks in the walls. The narrow, high windows set deep in the stone. Glass is nearly a lost art. Now in the deep on winter those windows are shuttered, barred, covered by tapestries, or simply by heavy cloth. Wolf knows where they are.
Knows this castle. Knows its halls and stones. Knows it like he knows his own bones by now, so often has he stalked its shadows. No hesitation as he rises up off the wall. Crosses the hall and throws back a tapestry and there: the window. Wolf heaves the bar off and throws open the shutters. The first, bracing blast of wind chills him to the bone.
It's risky. It's stupid. He does it anyway, thoughtlessly, suddenly too stifled by the walls not to: leaps out the window. Shifts in mid-fall, lands a monster, dashes into the night a true wolf. Four legs, white fur, yellow eyes. Suddenly the night and its scents hold no secrets from him.
He goes toward the woods. The sacred rites there, and those who watch over them.
DaisyCould go down galleries and halls. Doesn't. Goes out a fucking window and lands in the courtyard of the middle bailey in another form. It's dark and the moon doesn't shine down on him, but he has a ways to go before he can reach the woods. And it will be another few hours, at least, before the rites begin again. Everyone else has to go to sleep, before the kin can get away. Even the peasants.
He takes his man's shape again. The doublet comes with him. That was Blake's suggestion, to 'work wolf's magic' on it, just to be on the safe side. An expensive garment. Not one he would want torn. The chill of the wet air seeps through him but does not hurt him, as he strolls out of the shadows and towards the gate to the forward bailey,
through it,
and towards the gatehouse.
--
He is watched. He is seen. He is not stopped or questioned. Guards stand aside, but watch him out of the corners of their eyes. They say nothing to him but they may remember. He is not well trusted by those who serve; even among the kin who live and serve here and in the surrounding lands, only a handful know his true nature. For many, kin and mortal alike, his name alone is enough to give them pause.
The Van der Valks are not known for mercy.
--
It takes time to get to a place where he can safely shift again. Run through the cold air on all fours. The sky is so empty, so untouched; the darkness is flecked with stars of every size and color. The ground sacrifices itself to his devouring stride as he quickens his pace, running for the woods.
Van der ValkToo late he thinks perhaps he should have a story in mind. Some reason, some rationale for his departure from the feast. He thinks perhaps he has a horse somewhere. He thinks perhaps he should ride.
It doesn't matter in the end. No one questions him. No one bars his path. The portcullis is raised and the gates stand open; the drawbridge is down. Nothing at all bars his way; it's just a matter of time -- an irritatingly long time -- before he's far enough from the keep. Its fires, its eyes, its people.
When all around him is shadow he shifts again. Goes on four paws. Sharp ears, sharp nose. This is a younger world, and a wilder one. Electricity is still solely the domain of the elements and the gods. The night is so deep and black. Never before has he seen so many stars; so bright a sickle-moon.
Wolf begins to run. Stride by stride he picks up speed. The oppression of the keep -- its heavy falls, its stink, its smoke -- falls away like snow from shaken fur. A nameless savage joy rushes through his veins, quickens his pulse, threatens to rupture his heart. When he can hold it no more he howls, sends that wild note across the sky. Pauses only long enough for the echoes to die into the distance.
Runs again, then. To the place where the sacred rites are held -- even if they are abandoned now. Secret and empty.
DaisyBlake will take care of it. His lies, his covers, his secrets. Blake will protect them all.
That is what kin are for, is it not?
--
Back at the keep, a guard hears a wolf howl. Looks at the other standing nearby. They say nothing. Wolves howl, and some of the woods nearby are known to have wolves, though for some reason the wolf hunts in these parts typically end with more men dead than monsters.
Then again, for some reason, the wolves in these parts don't often venture to attach men, or livestock.
--
It takes him some time to get to the woods. Dangerous woods. The wolves sometimes hunt here. The kin -- at least the ones who participate in these rites -- are the ones who know of him, know he watches over them, know he is lord and master of beasts and so on, but they are still afraid sometimes. They will find their way with fire. They would bring steel, but they have forbidden it amongst themselves for arcane reasons. They are not close enough to the garou to know what is and is not truly necessary.
Tonight is the fifth night. Two more after this and it will be the Equinox, the true coming of spring. The wolves will return from the umbra -- most of them, at least, hopefully. He will collect a few gifts for watching over their rites and kin while they were gone, but they will be consolation prizes of a sort. It's not the same as the renown of joining them. It rankles.
There is no clearing, no altar. Just the woods. Just a place he knows. A place filled with traces of the fourth night's scents, left over from the night before. He finds the spot he watches from, the grass matted down a bit. It is out of their immediate circle. None of them ever know quite where he is, only that they can sense him somewhere out there.
There is nothing to do but wait. The drink is burnt out of his system; the smoke cleared from his lungs. Perhaps he rests. Perhaps he finds something small to eat in the woods.
Van der ValkPerhaps lifetime upon lifetime has passed like this for the wolf. Perhaps he's always born powerful, strong, vicious, protective, feared -- but always on the fringes. Never quite at the center. Close enough to see the fires. Close enough to feel the warmth. But outside that innermost, sacred circle.
He doesn't sit at the high table at the feast, though he's blood-cousin to the baroness. He holds no title, though he has land and nobility enough to claim a knighthood. He has no wife, no children, though he has a lord's bastard as a squire. He commands some amount of respect. He commands more suspicion and fear, and very little love at all.
He doesn't run with the pack as they bring back the spring, either. He watches over the rites, and there is some honor in that -- but it feels like a consolation prize. It feels like prowling on the fringes while the fires burn within.
And, in his own time: he has been given his mother's name. He has been given his mother's lands and wealth, her holdings, some measure of her power. He has been given these things but they do not feel earned; they do not feel quite his, yet. He has no family. He has no pack. He has none that bear him any real allegiance. None that feels for him any real bond of emotion,
except perhaps for the girl that lives across the hall from him.
Sometimes.
Even that, he sometimes doubts.
--
Wolf ranges the borders of that sacred, unmarked spot. He susses out the area, ascertains that all is safe and secure and exactly the way it was the night before, and the night before that. He returns, then, to that little hollow his body has made after hours of watching. There he beds down, whuffing, hindlegs relaxed to the side; one forepaw folded under.
Time passes. Stars turn. The darkness grows ever more complete. Wolf lays his chin down on a bed of dried and fallen leaves, each one crusted in frost. Perhaps he sleeps, but sleep is light. Little sounds in the forest tilt his furred ears this way and that. He does not feel the cold in this form, but he is aware of the season, the rhythms of the earth. The prey in the woods, so easy to hunt now that they have nowhere to hide.
He waits. He has an animal's shape, and with it, an animal's strange and timeless patience.
ritualsThere is only the moon. The hunt. The hunger. He is sated, though: a heavy meal and plenty of beer and wine back at the castle. Even the run has not made his stomach gnaw for more. Plus there is this sense, this feeling that some of the kin who come tonight may as well wear sky-blue, wheat-yellow, even the rich dark blue of his own garb. They are kin to his kind; they need to be protected in their play-acting against the darkness. Need to be protected from the wolf-pack who sometimes claims him as their sovereign when the moon is at its fullest and sometimes forget him -- however briefly -- when it wanes and he is distant, when he is too human to need them. These kin, pureblooded and long-limbed, need to be protected from the darkness that would consume them, the madness that might take them.
It rears its head even now. Dimly, faintly, but it is there. This is when the inbreeding was at its worst. This is when the greed and hypocrisy rose up. A thought enters his head, spoken by some mystic he knows in this life but not another: what if the madness was a salvation to the tribe? What if the madness was a way to make them innocent again, when otherwise they might fall to the Wyrm for all their pride and beauty and superiority?
It is a viciously dark thought. Cast it away. Lose it in the shadows. Forget it ever looked your way,
like glittering blue eyes, faceted as gemstones, looking at him over a pale freckled shoulder.
But she is not here. Best to forget that, too.
--
They did not want him. He will recall the full moon when volunteers were called and the best of them fought for places in the ritual. So many wolves. All of them Silver Fangs, all of them nearby, but so many. A sept's worth, really. All of them glorious and white, wearing jewels dedicated to their many forms that they garnered from the kings and princes and lords they 'serve'. The kings and princes and lords they use. He was among the youngest. He stood forth anyway. He volunteered anyway and they sneered at him, Cliath. Called him a Bastard to his face, beat him into the dirt for being unable to recite his lineage.
He was not even permitted into the challenges of strength, wit, speed, endurance, diplomacy to spirits. They threw him down and bloodied him and chastised him for trying. And he knew he earned it, deserved it: he is a bastard. He is but a Cliath. They will make him claw and fight and rage for his name and hope to Gaia that he dies in the attempt to make something of himself, but they will never respect him. The best he can ever hope for is their fear.
You must be patient, his spirit murmurs to him. A bloody hatred lives in the heart of this lifetime, pulsing out waves of rage with each beat against his ribs. He has this lovely cousin and her lovely children; he has these kin who do not know that he watches them to keep them safe. He eats the scraps of renown that fall to him when he is rejected from greater honor. He lies to the humans about his ancestry so they don't know he's a bastard. He has land and he has a knighthood and he has something, but in the end
it means so little.
His pack does not understand what he is. He has no mate. His squire lies for him, day after day. He lusts for the eldest daughter of the baron and knows it is worth nothing, wasting a thought on her; she will be married according to her station and he is not for him. There is very little for him in this life.
In many lives.
--
He thinks of her.
He should not.
As far as he can tell, she is not here.
--
Here, he feels the weight of time. He feels the spirit of the place, potent and surprising to him; the kin have no magic that could bring back springtime. But he feels it all the same, glimmering in the periphery of his awareness. He lays down, waiting for them to come.
The moon slides higher into the sky and distantly, he knows the horses are stabled and the lords are bedded down and everyone is sleeping. Those out in the halls are suspect; might be poisoners. He closes his eyes and drifts a bit. Listens to snakes and rabbits, birds and foxes. Does not chase them.
A murmur in his ear, a whisper,
in a language he does not recognize.
His eyes snap open.
--
They are seven, but there are others. They wear long, shapeless robes, undyed wool. It's cold now; there are shiverers. But they come in bare feet, single-file, all of them taller than the average human of this era. All of them smell like home to him. He cannot place it: he sees steppes in his mind though he may not know what those are. Castles. Woods. Mountains in the distance. Falcons soaring overhead, coming to rest regally on the arms of crinos wolves who are as pale as snow, with eyes of bright gold, bright blue, sometimes even pure white. There is a feast in the central castle, eternal. It is glorious and he does belong there. No one shuns him from it. It does not matter that the flags are tattered and the stones are worn. He belongs there.
These people, seven and then more, remind him of this feeling. Call to him with it. They don't know he's there, and the knowledge of this hurts a bit.
Torches light their way. They carry them on staffs that they set into the ground in a ring: north, south, east, west. Three in the center, forming a triangle. One of them -- a man -- sheds his robe. There is quieted laughter and nervousness; he is cold and it shows but his face is masked. Someone adorns him with a furred cloak over his naked body; they put gloves on him that look like they were made from a bear's paws. Things begin to quiet. Everyone is wearing a mask. Everyone is afraid of their face being shown, though what they do is sacred. Or they think it is.
Their rites begin. Smoke swirls into the sky and someone begins to play a heartbeat on a drum. A pair of women hum, and slowly begin to sing, wordlessly. The man in the mask and the bear-claw gloves and the furred cloak circles the four staffs, touching each. He spirals closer to the center, the triangle, and touches each staff as close to the fire as he dares. He places his palm on his middle, over his stomach but below his heart. He goes to stand in the center of the triangle.
Calls out to Falcon, to Luna, to Gaia. Asks Gaia to protect him, Luna to bless him, Falcon to give him vision. And thus he begins to shake, his entire body convulsing, as though he is possessed.
Quite suddenly, the torch representing the South goes out. And one of the humming, singing women gives a little shriek.
wolfmanEasier like this. The outrage, the injustice: all of it easier to stomach. Beast's mind so literal. So focused on the moment. Second by second, the passing present. Less thought of future, of past, of what may or may not be owed him, of who he may or may not be.
Torches coming. Acrid scent of smoke.
Wolf's head coming up off his paws. Fell asleep somewhere in the midst of all that waiting. Half-asleep, light-asleep, in the way of animals. Awake now. He sniffs the air. He rises to his feet with but a small sound. Rustle of fur over dead leaves. People are coming, men and women, kin to wolves. They wear strange and savage adornments. Clothes that make them look like beasts. Funny; when the wolf so often wears clothes to make himself look like a man.
--
Humans hum and humans sing. Humans make a circle, a triangle. Humans raise torches; wolf's hackles rise instinctively.
And then a torch blows out. Wolf bristles, muscles taut, anticipatory. Waits. Watches. Listens, ears moving, senses stretched out.
ritualsThey are so beautiful. That man shaking in the cold and the fury of what may be happening to him, what he may be imagining. They are all his kin and by god, they are cousins and distant cousins. They are ancestors and they are family. They are not just of the tribe. Dark as his visage is, he is dimly related to these people.
He knows that Philip is the one shaking, and Marie is the one who shrieked before her sister Francine shoved a hand over her mouth. He knows them. They are a part of him, blood and bone and spirit. He knows that his bastard squire's mother is out there, good woman, a bit dotty, thought the baron really loved her and is deeply honored that the baron has made her boy a squire not just to a knight but a wolf-knight.
These kin are his family. And he smells their fear as sour as week-old sweat under their arms when the light goes out.
South, first. Then the West, and the East, and the three in the middle. Only the torch of the North remains. And laughter fills the darkness. Dark, wicked, shrill laughter. The kin gather quickly to the center,
when you think they would run. But they gather instead.
wolfmanLaughter is all wolf needs. Jolts him forward like spurs in his flank. Great paws tear earth, fling twigs. He runs, four paws, comes down the slope and
comes to a skidding, dirt-flying stop. Just outside the circle. Hackles raised, feet planted. Head high. Tail straight out.
Teeth bared.
ritualsSome of the kin scream. They scatter and collect again, like birds. Like sparrows, though not falcons. Falcons might soar, wheel, dive. These birds, elegant and lovely as they may be, know when they are outmatched. They grab hold of each other, not recognizing him. One sees him and knows: white fur. Pure, elegant white fur. Sheer size. The fact that he gives pause, and does not attack them. One of them sees this, but another one swoons and falls to the ground. Several of them, male and female a like, are naked.
He sees their pale skin, but none of them have freckled shoulders, dappled haunches, gleaming eyes behind their masks. They are pure as cream, as gold, as silver itself. They cower, watching him, one of the women whimpering and Philip convulsing on the ground, foam at his mouth.
The air shimmers.
There is a collective gasp.
A body appears among the trees. Hispo, a massive white direwolf. Stalks In Snow, an Adren Theurge of the tribe. Rafael recognizes him though could not claim to truly know him. The body appears, out of nowhere, bloodied in the midsection but not lethally. The shimmer in the air fades to nothingness.
The North torch goes out, and the laughter stops.
wolfmanWolf's one fucking hair away from lunging at the apparition. Savage, vicious bloodlust beating in his veins. White fur, though. White fur and the sudden shock of pure, pure blood. Wolf arrests, pulls up short. Snaps his jaws at the air, spittle flying.
Last torch goes out. Wolf wheels this way and that. On edge, on guard. If nothing appears,
only if nothing appears,
he pads cautiously closer to the wounded Adren. Sniffs the ground near him. Puts a heavy paw on the other's fur, wary, whuffing.
ritualsIt doesn't move. Shimmers into existence, bloody, and thumps to the ground. Those kin who are naked are afraid to go for their robes; the one who shook and collapsed mid-rite has not moved. His body and the body of Stalks in Snow lie parallel to each other, head to toe, some distance apart.
But the Adren is not dead. He would have reverted to another form if he were. Nor does he rage back to life, frenzied among his own kin. He breathes, as does the kin play-acting at the ritual. Things have gone quiet but for that breathing, and Rafael's own.
The kin are aware of him now, staring at him. Some are waking from their faint; many have realized why he is here, what he is doing. Guarding them. If any recognize him they do not speak it; they hide behind their masks and cover their nudity with hands and arms, shivering now.
Stalks in Snow shifts with the paw pushing on him, but he is limp. His eyes flutter open but roll a bit; takes time to refocus. When he sees where he is, feels where he is, a sound like a howl echoes from the massive lungs of the crinos-formed monster. One of the kinfolk, a young woman, gives a shriek and claps her hands over her mouth in -- not terror.
In awe.
The howl is not loud. Soft, aching, forlorn. Sorrowful. Failed. Ashamed. Rafael hears all this and more in the song of the Theurge. Beside them, the kinfolk in the fur cloak is starting to move as well, letting out a subtle groan of fear and discomfort.
Nothing appears to harm them. The blood on Stalks in Snow is already drying, the wound beneath the fur already healing. But everyone can feel the fissue in the rite, the sudden coldness of the ground and air around them that had, for a few moments during the ritual, felt like it was starting to warm up.
Stalks in Snow shifts, and rolls, and pushes to his feet. Looking around, he does not shift, and gives a cautioning look to Rafael as well. Looks at the kin, holding his head proud, his dried blood a terrific slash of color across the gleaming white of his fur. He scans his eyes across them and they duck heads, shrink, awkwardly bowing or giving curtsy. He looks back to Rafael and nods his head in another direction. Away. Into the woods. Then, with a whuff of dismissal to the kin, he wheels, drops to all fours in his warform, and walks into the shadows.
wolfmanKin scattered. Rite disrupted. Adren standing, walking away.
Wolf stands there in the broken circle another moment. Looks at the kin -- frightened, startled, awed. Covering themselves, pitiful and furless in the cold. Unbathed, unshaven, ribs showing on most; blood still so pure. Potent in the crisp air.
Wolf turns away from them. A loose, powerful pivot, heavy fur riffling. He trots after the larger, more powerful wolf, fur white on the white snow, disappearing himself into the shadows.
--
Grows to a larger form as he follows. Dire, then war-form: coming nearly abreast of his elder. Not quite. Looks at the other, side-long. Does not break the silence.
ritualsThings are so different here. So strange. These people he feels an intense, fierce kinship toward: it is hard to leave them. As if by scent, he can tell that it is hard for Stalks in Snow to leave them, too. It is part mercy. It is also that these kin do not always understand that the Garou shapeshift, or how easily. They may not be aware of what these wolves' human faces look like. Strange, to be so distant from them. Strange, to feel such a heavy burden of protection, such ferocious affection.
He will realize: he is different here. He is strange. But only because he knows other ways: to live with a kinswoman just down the hall who knows his forms and his faces, who shares his bed at times, who does not share his blood. To feel closer to her than to kin of his own tribe.
Unthinkable, he realizes, to the part of himself that belongs here.
--
They leave. One grows to hispo; the other shrinks to it. They walk alongside each other, two enormous wolves of legend, until they are very far indeed. Until the scent of their kin is far, far at the periphery. Until the scent of smoke is long gone. It is a very long walk.
Stalks in Snow shifts. He becomes a man, wearing a heavy robe lined in fur, thick boots, thick gloves. It is as though his human form has fur as well. His beard is dark and sharply pointed; his brow is heavy but elegant all the same. He is closer to Rafael's bloodline than that of the baron's.
His breath steams, but he is not cold.
"What interrupted the rite?" he asks, brusquely.
wolfmanWolf is taken aback. Furred form gives a cover for his startlement. Paces on another few steps, big paws soft on fresh snow. Then he stops. Shifts: fur receding, clothes forming out of nothing. Boots, smallclothes, woolen hose, tunic, and that surcoat of deep blue. Finest thing he owns.
"Don't know," says the wolf. Frowns; knows that's insufficient. Unacceptable. Elaborates: "Torches went out. Something laughed. Then you fell out of the Umbra like something threw you."
Wants to ask. Wants to know what happened. Doesn't seem to be his place, his turn to ask the questions. Wolf keeps his mouth shut.
wolfmanWolf is quiet.
Wolf holds things in reserve. In check. Keeps them underhand, close to his chest. Still: a flick in his eyes, a flick of his ears, at that word.
Fianna.
Couple beats of pause. Then: "Fianna?"
rituals[dlp!]
ritualsThey stand there, two gentlemen of land and title and name, knowing one another's secrets. Adren to Cliath, though. Theurge to Ahroun; guess who has more to hide?
"Laughed?" he repeats, anger flaring in his eyes. He turns his head, breath steaming in the darkness. Takes a moment, and turns back to Rafael. "The rite in the Underworld was interrupted." A long, heavy moment, taut with rage... even the thin rage of a crescent moon, spiking unusually high tonight. "I failed at my gate."
He swears: "Shit-eating Fianna," furious. Spitting.
wolfmanWolf is quiet.
Wolf holds things in reserve. In check. Keeps them underhand, close to his chest. Still: a flick in his eyes, a flick of his ears, at that word.
Fianna.
Couple beats of pause. Then: "Fianna?"
rituals"Fianna," the Adren snarls, as though Rafael's repetition was not vehement and vicious enough, filled with enough exasperation, disgust, and fury. "The clan that settled along the borderlands some years past."
Memories flood Rafael's mind, feeling more and more split in two as the hours pass. He knows of this clan, this troupe of Fianna that have actually been here for close to a decade now. They will never cease to be newcomers until most who remember their coming have died. They have bred and they have married and they have fought and when the Wyrm has threatened they have fought alongside the Silver Fangs who truly rule these lands.
Recently, arguments about the seasonal rites, between the Fangs and the Fianna. Debates, really. Ignored petitions. Occasional challenges leaving the Fianna choking on the dirt they are slammed down into. Threats, empty ones to be sure, about disrupting the rites of the Silver Fangs in order to ensure that the Fianna, too, benefit from the better crops, the softer earth, the milder winters.
It comes to him like a mallet to the skull, this knowledge. Of course. Those shit-eating, sheep-fucking Fianna, mad from the blue dye they wear on their skin, have finally followed through.
"We will go," says Stalks in Snow. "They will answer for this," he growls, and drops to all fours in lupus.
wolfmanIn a different lifetime --
hard to remember now, but in his real lifetime. or is it? perhaps this is reality. perhaps this is the only life he has ever known.
-- in a different lifetime the wolf didn't have much of an opinion on the Fianna. Or the Get, or even the Lords. They were out there. There were different from him, another blood, another tribe. They didn't have anything to do with him.
In this lifetime he hates them. Reflexively, disgustedly. Filthy, illbred, stinking savages, coming onto land that is not theirs. Land that they could not hold in the first place. Land won by the Fangs, by right of conquest. Stalks in Snow speaks and the wolf knows he is right: of course. It is the Fianna. Who else could it be?
Wolf drops too. Follows the crescent-moon on four legs, soundless in the snow.
ritualsThey're easier to deal with than those monsters from the icy wastelands, but there is no denying it: Fianna are filthy savages. There are rumors of Garou taking multiple mates at the same time. They drink to excess to dull the pain of their own idiocy, perhaps. They let their kin practice occultism, children run around naked, they wallow in mud. It is only by the grace of the Silver Fangs that they survive on the fringes as they do rather than being driven out.
Well perhaps that will end now. Their ploys at getting upper hands, their pranks during sacred rites, their wickedness, their nose-thumbing disrespect.
After a time, they begin to run. Run the way wolves run, over distance and for great time, pacing themselves. They stop for nothing, needing nothing extra to drink or eat, and they run through the night. It is almost dawn when Stalks in Snow begins to slow. Rafael knows his squire will cover; perhaps his master is ill. Many masters are 'ill' this morning, after the celebration last night. Hardly matters. He may not even think of it.
Light touches the horizon when they come near the small territory the Fianna have carved for themselves. Mostly kin, just a few separate packs of Garou, most of whom travel and hunt as their lot is like to do. He can smell them though: kin and wolf alike, down there. Already a few of the paltry shelters they build for themselves have smoke sifting upward, white tendrils into the sky. Already they can sense the beginnings of industry. There are a few skinny goats; they are being milked and fed by some of the older children. A baby is crying, soon quieted by a tit in its mouth.
Stalks in Snow growls quietly, looking down at the tiny village. He lifts his head, sniffing the air, searching for something. Lowers his head again to look at Rafael and indicates, with muzzle and eyes, a particular hut on the edge, nearest to the hill they stand on, the trees they hide among. There is smoke coming from that hut, too. It is far from the others, just past a stone's throw. White rocks encircle the base of the hut, each one the size of a man's fist. There is a single goat in back, fenced away from a small block of earth that must be some kind of garden. The goat is mottled brown and white, munching already on its breakfast.
"Magic," the Adren snarls, towards the hut. He looks quickly around them both, lowers himself down a bit, and goes swiftly down the hill. Almost before the ground evens out he flows easily into his man's shape, but stays towards the shadows, out of sight of the few people who are up and moving around.
wolfmanMagic.
Word stirs something in the wolf; reflexive, not unsympathetic. Magic. Fianna. The association is immediate, is obvious, is so painful in its hope that wolf is ashamed of himself:
witch.
girl?
Wolf comes alongside his elder. Looks down on the pitiful little village; the mud, the wattle-and-daub, the dirt. Looks at the single hut Stalks in Snow points out. Notes its distance from the others. Flicks an ear. Sways his tail. Pushes up into his man-form, smoothly, and faces the Adren.
"Your name is known. Maybe even here. You won't get a kind welcome here. Let me go alone."
ritualsStalks in Snow pauses, looking over at Rafael. He does not see or chooses to ignore -- or simply misinterprets -- the raw hopefulness that swelled up inside the Ahroun at his side who is, strangely, suggesting that he should act the diplomat.
"I do not expect one," he says roughly, of a kind welcome. Is not seeking one, he means. His rage is a crackling thing; he is wise enough to be unsettled by that, as well as wary of the full-moon suggesting he goes first, alone.
"What do you have in mind, Cliath?" he wants to know, too mannerly to narrow his eyes at a tribemate.
wolfmanWhat does he have in mind? Wolf can't say himself. Stares through the lifting darkness and the morning fog at the little huts. The thin, tenuous strands of smoke wavering in the dawn breeze. Wolf needs to speak. Elder's waiting for him.
"My cousin is the Baroness," he says. Words taste strange; a different life from the one he knows. He speaks before he has an idea. Strings it together as he goes, "I am her knight and these are her villeins, if only in name. It is my right and my duty to visit from time to time. Particularly in the wake of foul deeds.
"They cannot turn me away. They will not attack me -- not unless they want their kin slaughtered and driven from the land by the Baron's men. So let me go alone. Whatever I discover, whatever I find, you will hear of it."
ritualsThe sun does not wait for them. It continues to rise, and the shadows grow fainter and longer. The Adren glances toward the horizon as Rafael speaks, and looks back at him impassively. Rafael can see what trust he has earned on the long run to the village fading slightly in the Theurge's eyes. He could make argument.
But then he might not learn why the Ahroun is so keen to go alone.
His head tips to one side, and then he nods in the direction of the hut. "I will hunt food. Meet me again in the woods before mid-day, or I will come."
