cailleach.

wolfman

Wolf sees that trust fading.

Wolf discovers he doesn't really care.

Nods, perhaps a little too quickly, to the Theurge's edict. Looks to the horizon to mark the sun's position, and then begins to descend the slope to the tiny village. On two legs. Without his horse, without his mail, without any weaponry except that which Gaia gave him. He has the urge to look back, to see if the Theurge really was gone, but resists. That would be too suspicious, and besides -- Crescent-Moons always found a way to watch if they wanted to. Perhaps an Adren of the Silver Fangs has honor enough not to spy.

--

That mottled goat bleats in terror as he approaches. Boots on the squelching mud, hose and surcoat flecked with dirt. Wolf moves powerfully, purposefully; feral with his distrusting slouch, his unsettled and unsettling stare. Out of the hills, into the outskirts of that pitiful little village. Looks toward the other huts but then turns toward that one. Touches the walls with his gloved hand -- what is that, mud? Is it actually a mud hut? Circles. Looks for entrance. Tries, first, to peer through the rough windows.

rituals

The huts of the village are primarily conical; many use worked stone in their low walls, a few have taken on the more rectangular shapes of the peasantry who live near the castle, but most have the upward-sloping roofs of the Fianna's homelands. This one, where the magic emanates, is no different. It is small, no gigantic roundhouse with the sorts of attics that were sometimes built -- how does he know that? A diagram from a book he saw as a child, perhaps, or maybe in this life he burnt one to the ground. It is just a hut. Smoke comes up through the conical roof, through the thatch. There is a doorway, and like some of the huts this one has a wooden doorway instead of just cloth hanging.

This is what he sees, and what he approaches. He does not conceal himself too carefully. Behind him, the Adren is already gone: slipped to wolf-form, vanished by Gaia's graces into the trees. Rafael doesn't look, though. He knows he might be watched. He perhaps hopes he will not be.

The goat does bleat -- this hut only has the one. The ground is wet from dew that is not frosted; spring is on its way, rite or no rite. He knows this, his modern mind knows this, even if the people here seem to believe differently. Their rituals cannot stop the earth's motion around the sun. He puts a hand on the stone wall and feels a shudder go up his arm. Does not know what it is. No part of him, ancient or modern, can tell. It makes his joints ache.

No windows to peer through. Finds that door, though, which faces away from the woods on the hill and away from the village, too. Faces south, with the village out towards the east, the woods to the west. More hills, more woods, to the north. Goat and garden are on the north side of her --

this

-- hut.

--

A voice from inside, then. Clear and cool, muffled through the wood. A woman's voice. Thick accent, but smooth words all the same.

"Impolite to lurk," she calls. But the door does not open. Tone has a warning to it.

wolfman

Magic.

That word beats through his mind again, just as ache beats through his bones. Wolf snatches his hand back from that stone wall. Flexes fist in its leather glove. Circles, animal-wary, around the perimeter of that primitive dwelling.

What year is he in, he wonders. What country, what continent, what world. Never paid enough attention in school to know. British Isles, he assumes. That's where the Fianna are from; and besides, he's speaking English, isn't he? He thinks he is, anyway. Some dialect, some version, some ancestral strain of it. And some pre-Renaissance era; seven hundred or a thousand years in the past. Maybe more. He does not think this world has discovered gunpowder yet.

A bygone world. A bygone life. A life his spirit lived once, maybe.

Or maybe just a fever dream. A world his spirit has been sifted into by some eldritch

magic.

--

Wolf comes around to the door. Feels like a fairy tale. Feels like he should huff and puff and --

wolfman

voice from within arrests him for a beat. He thinks a moment, then speaks: "I mean you no harm."

rituals

A laugh, at that. A fake laugh, a bold and quickly barked laugh. "HAH!"

Hardly a beat thereafter: "Might knock if that were true."

wolfman

Wolf scowls; not that she can see it. Or maybe she can. Wolf takes breath to reply.

Knocks instead. Heavy and deliberate: THUD THUD THUD.

rituals

A short time passes. A few heartbeats. And there is sound inside, something warm coming his way. He hears the rustle of skirts and footsteps; he can feel the presence of Fianna blood on the other side, though there is plenty of it in this village.

On the other side of the door a plank bar is lifted. The door opens inward, scraping the floor of packed dirt. Light inside mostly comes from fire at the center of the hut and the hidden cracks between thatch and walls, but it is only just sunrise and even for him there is some adjustment to the light to be made. He sees that there is first a small hallway, just a few feet long, built to help with drafts -- and likely, security. The floor is as clean as a dirt floor can be: swept of dust, packed hard, not damp with mud.

Past that he can see the fire in the center, the spit, the -- yes. The cauldron. Shadows all around the circle. A bed somewhere, low but still raised from the floor. Sundry sacks and barrels of dried foodstuffs. A table and a bench. A couple of woven mats serving as rugs across much of the floor. And here and there, white stones on the ground. Lines drawn in the dirt floor. Feathers and herbs and flowers drying from the roof. A faint scent of blood from some butchering done in here.

And her, the woman at the door who lives in this hut alone because he can smell no husband, no child, no sister. The woman who in this world should have a grandchild by now: she looks to be in her mid-thirties. She is wearing a chemise with closely-fitting sleeves that end just past her wrists, the color a sort of fair brown, just a shade above tan. There is a bit of embroidery at the cuffs and halfway up the forearms, simple but adorning. Over her chemise there is a surcoat dress dyed to a muted, sombre blue -- not enough to offend the noble class with its brightness but more colorful than the lot of half-naked savages outside. It has a similar embroidery on the hems and edges. There are no side-laces to the surcoat, just a simple belt of metal links. Nothing terribly fine, but surprisingly not just rope or cord or... lacking a belt altogether. It hangs at her hips, the ends of the chain hanging down one thigh. There is a necklace hinted at around her throat, but it is hidden beneath her chemise. The end of the dress does not scrape the floor but comes close, revealing only the tips of a pair of feet. In stockings, in a small pair of leather shoes.

Her hair is dark, dark, thick and tousled and hanging around her shoulders with no care for impropriety. Her face is fair, as all these Fianna are fair, but she lacks their ruddiness. There are freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her lips are not lush but she has a wide, expressive mouth. Her eyes are large, and round, and luminous, and their blue is indescribable. But there are lines around that mouth and at the corners of those eyes; she is a good decade older than the skinny thing. witch. girl. that he knows.

But it's her, all the same. Given another decade and change, given something crackling and potent in her eyes that the girl he knows either does not have yet or has learned to conceal, given strange garb and a strange place, but... her. All the same.

Looking at him for a long moment, then turning slowly, her hand leaving the door, her footsteps taking her inside to the darkness and the smell of something cooking in the cauldron. She leaves him to enter, if he will, or leave her entirely.

No: leaves him, but says as she walks:

"Best close the door, Son of Falcon."

wolfman

Woman comes his way and wolf stands close to the door. Stops just short of sniffing the cracks to try and catch a scent, or perhaps the lack of one. Little need for his curiosity in the end. The door swings open -- heavy, oaken thing that it is, abused by climate, ravaged by weather.

Woman inside is not a girl anymore. Not his skinny thing, witch, girl. Not the same, and yet the same: the same soul, a different time. A different age, both for the world and for the body she now inhabits. Inhabited. Something. Wolf resists the urge to put his hands on his own face, look for a reflective surface; a sudden, misplaced, belated urge to discover just what he looks like in this world. The same? Different? Older? Younger?

Wolf is staring. Woman moves away. Her skirts don't quite sweep the floor. Her hair does sweep her shoulders. She calls him Son of Falcon. Must mean she doesn't know him in this life. But then of course she doesn't: he doesn't know her, either. Remembers her with the memories of a life not yet lived.

He steps in. Shuts the door. Morning light blotted out; just the light of fire beneath the cauldron. Wolf looks about in that uncertain glow, noting the grains and the tough salted meats, perhaps a few withered apples saved from the autumn past. The herbs and the flowers and other inedibles hanging from the roof beams, beyond which the smoke-stained thatch can be seen. Perhaps there is a bench to sit on. If not, he finds a barrel, a sack, something. Seats himself and pulls off his rough gloves, tucking them through his belt.

"I come from the keep," he says, "and from the Rite. Something went wrong. An Adren of my tribe failed his Gate. Something threw him from the Umbra. It looked like sabotage. He blames the Fianna. You, specifically.

"Maybe I'm a fool, but I don't think it was you. Yet if you know anything of it, you'd do well to tell me now."

bride of stag

Nothing.

His nose finds nothing of her. There is so much else to sense in here, so many other scents, that the lack of her would go unnoticed if he were not, on some level, looking for it. The Fianna kinswoman in front of him does not recognize him and does not know him and has no scent and her eyes are yet that same, familiar, unsettling blue. No one around here has eyes like that.

Fey, some part of his mind whispers, tense and rage-spikingly so. He thinks of fire, of cold iron. Hard to get your claws into such creatures to begin with; never quite sure they do any good even when you end with something bloodied at your feet.

Shake the thought away: she is flesh and blood, right there in front of him, and he can sense Stag's touch on her plain as day. Plain as the bone-handled knife on her table, plain as the scent of porridge cooking for breakfast. There is the bench at her table. He takes a seat there without invitation, and she glances at him as the bench scrapes, but says nothing. Takes off his gloves like he plans to stay a bit. Smirks a bit to herself, turning her face away.

There is a part of him that wants to smack her so hard she lands face-down in the dirty for that smirk. Only a part, though, and a sleepy, distant part of him that belongs more to this land than he does.

She is taking up a long-handled wooden spoon, bowl wide enough for ladling, and stirs the cauldron from outside the ring of the firepit. Classic sight, that, even if it is only porridge. He talks of keep, rite, tribemate, umbra, sabotage. She looks over at him when he says You, specifically but does not smirk, or raise a brow. He tells her he doesn't think it was her, and she looks back at her cook-pot.

"I do not know half the words you spoke just now, Son of Falcon," she tells him. Lifts her eyes, looking at him through the smoke of the fire. "We are plain folk here." Corner of her mouth curls. That way. That same way he's seen a hundred times on a younger face. By virtue of the comparison, perhaps now it's clear to him how much more affection there is for him in her. The other one. The one not here. His witch.

Or at least: the witch he knows.

wolfman

Frightens him a little, side of him that wants to visit violence upon this woman. Not to say he isn't a savage, isn't a beast, isn't a violent brute in his own time. But it's different then. It's feral, rooted in predation. This: it's rooted in superiority, a sense of privilege that wolf doesn't really understand. Or like.

Curls his hand into a fist to control it. Maybe woman mistakes that for something else.

Doesn't seem frightened of him though. So fucking bold, even in this older, rawer age. Girl -- no, woman -- goes over to the cauldron, ladles porridge. Wolf wonders if she'll serve him. Part of him expects it; demands it. That's the part he tries to muzzle. Put away.

Makes him sad, too, that side of himself. Sad because it means there's no possible way he knows her in this life. No possible way he

feels for her the way he feels for the girl, in his own time.

--

That smile is the same. Colder here; without affection. But the same.

Makes wolf snort, too. Disbelieving, but not entirely angry. He shifts, leans over, elbows on knees. Watches her from under black eyebrows, bemused.

"Maybe some of them are simple," he says. "Not you. Fifteen years ago you were already cooking up more in that cauldron than porridge and stew. Brews that heal. Brews that take away pain. Brews that put a man to sleep. Maybe brews that could make him never wake again.

"Now, I can't even imagine what you're capable of. Felt a little of it though, when I touched the walls of your house."

Few beats go by. Wolf chews his lower lip, stares at woman. Then straightens.

"I'm not your enemy," he says. "I'm here to help you. Not your 'simple' friends. Not your wolves. You."

bride of stag

They burn women like her. Not witches, whose very homes vibrate with magic. Just women who do not wear their hoods or caps, women who live alone at the edge of town, women with no husbands -- or, if he is dead in the ground, women who do not wear black. Women with no children to survive them, or children who will not live with their mother to take care of her. Women who do their own butchering, women who smirk at knights and lords as though she is not afraid of them. Women who do not know their place.

Maybe that is how this version of her life ends. Screaming. Skin peeling upward in the heat. Slow. Painful.

She does not serve him. But only because the porridge is not done yet. She is watching it; close now. She's hungry. Needs to break her fast. Needs restoration from hard work the night and day before. She stirs, listening to him as he tries to describe her life a decade and a half ago; what does he know. She should have been married by then. Maybe she was. Maybe he beat her for what she did, and what she was. Maybe he still trusted her to cook his food.

The woman looks at him again. Again, her eyes pierce through the smoke, when he speaks of brews that make men sleep til they waste away.

"I know better than to try and convince you that we are good Christians here," she says. She knows what he is. He can tell what she is: at least in part. "I do not deny what I am, for you cannot harm me in my own home," she adds, with strange certainty, looking back at her porridge. "Unless you are wrong about his intentions -- I do not call a nobleman a liar --"

he can almost hear the to his face in the after-breath of that,

"-- the only thing you have to help me from is the other one who thinks I interfered with his rituals."

Thoughtfully, she goes on stirring. "Which would make you a traitor to your blood."

wolfman

"I think my blood is better served by the truth than blind vengeance," wolf retorts. "I think my tribe would be best served by a righteous war on the true enemy than an ill-guided attack on an innocent woman."

Hesitation. Slower:

"I care little enough for what my tribe thinks. I came here for a reason. Maybe it's to see that you don't suffer for something you didn't do."

bride of stag

He does not care -- or cares little -- what his tribe thinks. She looks at him. That smirk again.

She nods at the end of the table. "Get a bowl," she says. "The keep is far, and I doubt the other one stopped to eat."

wolfman

"I only have until midday," wolf cautions - reaching nonetheless for the bowls. Large, wooden, mismatched perhaps. He stands, approaching the cauldron, handing the woman one and then the other to fill. "My elder will want answers when I return. Or when he comes to find me."

bride of stag

"Perhaps you shall have some," she says, and takes one bowl. Fills it with porridge -- thick in consistency, pale in color, unappetizing to look at, but with some seasoning in it that makes it fragrant. Makes the mouth water slightly. She hands him one bowl back, full, then fills the other. Spoon goes back in and then she hefts the rope-and-leather-wrapped handle of the cauldron and lifts it off the spit, over to the dirt.

Does this one-handed, without a grunt. The cauldron, large as the belly of a woman with child, sets down on the earth as lightly as if it were made of cloth. Or feathers. Or air.

The witch, whose very presence seems to cause tremors in the air, walks over to the table and sits down on the bench at one end, lifting up a small hand-carved spoon. There is another for him, if he wishes it. They are clean. The wood is smooth. She has some surprisingly fine things. Even her bed looks as though it is not simply stuffed with straw.

First she takes a bite. And after he has begun to eat as well, she speaks, though she does not look at him:

"What was it you were saying before?" she asks. "I was truthful, when I said I did not understand your words."

wolfman

Looks at the porridge as it is handed to him. Unappetizing to look at to be sure; a world away from the thick, meaty stew he ate last night. A world and a timeline away from the sort of food he eats in his real life, his 21st-century life, when the amount and variety and richness of the foodstuffs that fill every aisle of every single grocery store in the country would astound even a king here-and-now.

Smells good, though. Smells fragrant, herbed. Pang of homesickness in the wolf: remembers that night girl made stew, unasked, unannounced. He accepts a spoon, eats unhesitatingly and hungrily. Pauses only when she speaks again.

Cocks his head, curious. Maybe a little guarded.

"The Rite of Spring," he says. "The Rite of Reawakening. Wolves do it to bring back the sun. To rejuvenate and cleanse ourselves. It's ... very sacred. A great honor to be chosen to perform the rite, as Stalks-in-Snow was. An enormous shame to fail it, as he did. And an inconceivable insult, to cause someone else to fail it.

"Surprised you don't know."

bride of stag

"The wolves here suffer my life because I keep their mates and children alive when none else can," the witch says. "It is the only reason."

She pauses a beat; there is fury in her own voice. "You are a fool. You know nothing, yet act on it." Huffs, scoffing.

"All right,"

and the words are so round, so familiar. Nearly the same voice, as --

"bring your elder and tell him what you believe. See what he can do. You have given me his name."

Shakes her head, scoffing again. "Fool and child, with a disloyal heart."

wolfman

Wolf wheels, a heavy, shoulder-led motion. Eyes flashing. "I wasn't going to tell him a goddamned thing," a moment, just a moment, and it's his own unaltered words in this ancient time, "except that you weren't involved."

And he pulls back. Straightens.

"Yet I'll not stand here and be mocked any longer."

bride of stag

"I do not mock you," she says, her voice raising. Her body raising from the bench.

The bench which follows her, an inch, across the floor.

"I brought you in. I broke my fast at your side. And you accuse me. In my home." Her eyes flash, her voice -- strikes. Like a bolt. The door rattles slightly, wood against stone, with her anger. "You are a fool, Son of Falcon. It is not mockery. It is a warning to one I have eaten with that he does not know what he thinks he knows. Ignore it at your will."

A gesture, then, sharp but not dismissive; she cuts the words from her mouth to leave them coiled at his feet.

No wonder what little dust there is around his boots swirls, slightly, toward his ankles, as she moves her hand.

wolfman

Objects shivering. Materials quivering each to each. Wolf is not entirely unaware, though he is heedless. Angered all the more. "What are you going to do?" he challenges, savagely. "What? Toss me into a wall? Set me ablaze?

"What don't I know? Tell me, if my ignorance is so great."

bride of stag

The wood is drawn to her. The earth. The very stones seem as though they would like to pull from their moorings and swirl around her, encircle her, protect her if she needs it. The wind comes through the roof, seeking her command, seeking to fill her lungs if that is what she requires.

The land loves her. Even if her own people do not. Even if her own tribe would see her slaughtered, but for midwifery and the easing of fever that she can bring to their blood-kin. No wonder she lives so far from the others.

An image flashes into his modern mind, from... Thanksgiving. Doesn't exist yet. Means nothing yet. The image confuses him, how frozen it is, even if part of his mind remembers it as a picture. She texted it to him. All sorts of kin around a table, and one of them a wolf --

funny, how he could tell even in a photograph

-- and the way that wolf stared at Devon, who was grinning at the camera. Stared. Glared. Glowered. Could have been lust or any number of things but he knows now exactly what it was. Rage borne of distrust. A wolf that would rather see this scentless, powerful, unknowable thing dead rather than loose.

The witch, here and now, looks down at the dust. Looks at his eyes. The hut settles a bit, but only by will. "You are in my home and have shared my table," she says, her voice low. "I do not threaten you."

Though she could. God, he can almost hear it in her voice: throw him into a wall? Set him ablaze? Could she?

Her brow is furrowed. She means what she says. Looks apologetic and defensive all at once. Wary.

"It is... a jape, Son of Falcon. For spring, and because the weight of your tribe is so heavy on the rest of us that it must be laughed at to avoid real war." The witch shakes her head. "I know my people, though they despise me. Yet I was no more a part of it than you were."

wolfman

Rage drains from the wolf even as fury leaves the witch. He turns to face her fully. Comes a step or two back into the humble, though not decrepit, little hut. Exhale like a sigh rounds his shoulders down under that richly dyed but coarse surcoat.

"Nor do I mean to threaten you. At least believe this much: I would not harm you if I could help it.

"But the Silver Fangs will not see this as a jape. They will see it as a grievous insult, tantamount to a declaration of enmity. Certainly enough to be an excuse for war. If I were you, kinswoman, I would find someplace to hide until this storm passes -- especially if your tribe holds as little love for you as you say. Weak, hateful men are always eager to pin their troubles on women like you."

bride of stag

"The wolves of my tribe are not all there is to my tribe," she says, her voice low but carrying. "I tend to all of them. Do you think your tribe will leave my kin in peace when they turn a prank into a slaughter?" She snorts. "They will kill or scatter the infirm, enslave the young, and abduct the fertile as soon as the wolves are dead. As it always is."

The witch crosses her arms over her midsection. "Weak, hateful men do not survive women like me," she tells him, flatly.

wolfman

"And women like you don't always survive weak, hateful wolves." There's a touch of exasperation there. "But do as you will. You know my thoughts.

"I should go. The longer I delay the more suspicious Stalks in Snow becomes. If I were to find your wolves, where would I go?"

bride of stag

An eyebrow of hers lifts. "You say your people are going to bring war to mine, and you would ask me to lead you to their dens?"

There's affront in that. Anger. They may despise her, push her to the edge of town, might kill her if she weren't keeping their mates and children alive, but she doesn't hate them. Doesn't run to hide while they face suffering. Defends them anyway, for whatever it's worth.

Probably not much, in the long run.

But she edges back from that assumption, half a breath after voicing it. Frowns at him. "Why do you ask?"

wolfman

"So I can speak to your wolves." Answers both her questions with that: the rhetorical and the genuine. "So I can learn who amongst them is responsible for what happened. There will be a price exacted; even you must see the justice in that. A sacred rite was interrupted. But if I can, I'll argue for leniency and peace."

bride of stag

Stares at him. Her eyes hide her but show her wariness, like a woman encircled by thorns.

Her arms uncross, and she walks over to him, opening her hand to him, palm-up. Waits.

wolfman

Another flicker of memory, quick and vivid as lightning. Wolf remembers a night, the hallway, the girl, her hand. Bad idea, he said. No it's not, she said.

Even a misbehaving dog knows this isn't the same thing. Still; the memory is there. Strikes hot as a hammer, an anvil, a bar of forged iron.

Wolf takes her hand.

bride of stag

Doesn't grasp her wrist; men don't do that to women here. But women also don't offer their hands to men, skin to skin, like this. She looks up at him, watching him, as he puts his hand on hers.

"Say that again," she tells him,

as the touch of her makes the skin of his palm tingle, as though his hand had fallen asleep and was trying to wake.

wolfman

Wolf's eyes flash to the meeting of their hands.

"So you can divine truth from my words?"

bride of stag

She sees that flash. And she doesn't understand it, can't assume why he looks at her. Her brow furrows a little, perhaps in confusion.

But she says nothing.

wolfman

Girl --

woman. Witch: she can see the wolf take a breath. Expands his chest, shifts his shoulders. When he exhales he meets her eyes. Those eyes are the same. Those eyes look at him across a gulf of time and space, and if he looks deeply enough he can almost believe he never left at all.

--

But he did leave. And he's here now. And he has no idea when or if he'll ever return.

--

"I'll speak to the wolves of the Fianna," he says, slowly. "I'll discover, if I can, who sabotaged the rite. I will bring him or her to justice, and only justice. I will argue against war. I will argue against cruelty. I will argue against vengeance visited upon those who do not deserve it."

bride of stag

She has no idea how she makes people feel. The way her very home hurts their joints and vibrates their bones. The way her touch, at times, makes their flesh buzz. She knows that sometimes things happen. She sometimes can control it, stop it, but so much happens without her intention even needing to be awakened. He stares at her like she cannot be trusted, and she is used to this, but she does not know why he thinks what he does. Or even what he thinks she might do.

His palm tingles and he thinks she will use divination, thinks it is some spell. But it is just her. It is nothing she can help, any more than he -- or her people -- can help their distrust. Their fear.

All the same, though she uses no intent, no will for it, magic does happen. He tells her what he does and though he doesn't swear on Gaia or the saints or his life, she takes it as an oath. Simple oaths, true oaths, need no Bible, no promise. Only the word.

His hand feels hot. The tingling has become a burning sensation, though in the webs between his fingers there are pin-pricks of ice. The witch takes a breath, and slides her hand away, and the sensations fade, though his hand still seems to be trying to wake up. It aches a bit.

"Sunset," she tells him, quietly. "They will eat with the kin before continuing the ritual tonight." Shakes her head. "I do not know where they are now. But I can help you find them."

wolfman

"You'll come with me?"

Wolf thinks about that. Ruminates. Chews on it. There's an ache of hope behind his breastbone. A wariness too; not of her but what may become of her. Caught in the center of a tribal struggle. Caught between the world of men and the world of beast; distrusted and shunned by both.

"I don't know that I can protect you."

Naive of him, perhaps, to think that he needs to.

bride of stag

It's not just the way he says it. The words themselves betray that ache that tries to hide behind his voice, which is as hopeless as a song trying to hide in the dark. She hears it and does not quite understand it,

but it makes her smile. A very small smile, less of a smirk, though her eyes also glitter with a touch of amusement. It isn't cruel. She isn't cruel. She is just... what she is.

"No," she says, without apology, no matter how touched she might be by that hope. "There are other ways."

She turns, going over to a stack of kindling and selecting one branch, about an arm's span in length. She begins to draw in the dirt. A square with a cone shape: her hut. The hill nearby, the scratch marks of trees. "Do you know this land?" she asks him, glancing up.

wolfman

Wolf is disappointed, to be sure. Relieved too. Comes a few steps back toward the center of the hut; drops easily to a crouch, one knee in the dirt.

"No." Pause. Then, slower: "Yes. I don't know it, but the other does."

bride of stag

That makes her tip her head, amused again, but now also: curious. She doesn't say anything, but he can see it in her eyes, and in the way she lowers herself to a crouch across from him. No knees though. Sits balanced on her feet, with shocking ease. Hands him the wand -- the stick.

"Draw what he knows of the land. I will prepare a pendulum, and we will find the wolves."

When he takes the stick she rises again, going to some shelves carved right into the stones of her home's wall. She searches through random objects until she finds a long strip of leather, wound tightly about a stone that is finger-length and narrow, smooth from a river. It is etched with a few symbols, unknown to either of the minds in his current body, but they stand out bright white against the gray outer flesh of the rock.

She rolls the stone in her palm, worrying over it with her touch though her face is placid, watching as he creates a basic, sketched-out map of the surrounding lands. From memory.

And not his own.

"What is it like," she asks, as he draws, "having two persons in one body, so different from one another?"

wolfman

Wolf has a stick in his hand. Crouches in the dirt. Hesitates; then puts thoughts from his mind and just draws. Scratches things into the dirt that his conscious mind is only barely aware of: forests, streams, hills, keeps. This village.

Doesn't glance up, though he does give her question some thought. Head down, brow furrowed, wolf moves his shoulders in a way that may or may not have significance in this time.

"Not like having two people in one head. More like waking from a vivid dream. One in which you were yourself, but lived a different life. Had different memories, knew different things. Both feel real and complete, but couldn't put then together if you tried."

A pause. Then wolf sets the stick down, his map drawn. Looks up.

"You and I are the only links between the world I came from and this one. The place is different, the time is different, the people are different. Except you. And me. We exist in both worlds, here and in the other. But you're older here. More powerful. Far more sure of yourself."

bride of stag

The witch takes care not to let her skirts disturb the drawing of a map he's creating for her. She remains standing, looking down, watching. Outside her hut the village is coming alive. The sun keeps on rising and fires burn a little higher and children make noise and the work of the day begins. There is always something to be done. She goes on rolling that finger-length stone between her palms, thoughtful.

She is looking at him when he looks up. She does not look away. In another life, which she insists she has no tie to, no relationship, not even admitting the possibility of a shared soul: maybe she would look away. Or the witch he knows, the younger one, would. This woman is not afraid of anything.

And she shakes her head. "I told you before. I am not her. I have no half-dream of another life. You would do well to remember that.

She lowers herself to that crouch again. Her eyes are on the map as she lifts her arm high over the center, where her hut is pictured. The cord is dropped, and stone at its end, dangling and jostling for a moment before it becomes perfectly, abnormally still. The cord becomes taut, as though some intense magnetic force pulls the tip of the stone toward the map. She begins, with the slightest motion of her wrist, to force the pendulum to movement. It begins to spin in a circle that grows wider and wider. The cord remains tight; the stone remains pointed firmly downward even when physics should have it tilting.

The hair on his arms stands on end. A wet, cold chill trickles up his spine towards his skull.

The leather cord jerks, and pulls the finger-shaped stone downward, sharply. It's hard enough to disturb some of his drawing, but the tip of the stone hits in the woods to north. Deep woods they are, he knows: dark at midday, and filled with prey both dangerous and rare. The wyldlings are undisturbed there; there are rumors that these are the woods where the fey take the children they steal.

The witch lifts her eyes from the map and looks at him. Even in the dim light of her hut, her pupils have constricted to needle-points. She looks fierce like that, or moreso: she has a flush in her cheeks that was not there before.

"Hunting or praying," she says, giving the cord a snap and catching the stone in her palm in midair. "You will find them doing one or the other. Maybe both."

wolfman

Watching, wolf wonders where her power came from. How she learned it. Who taught her, who trained her, how she came to harness such elemental powers.

An unseen force pulls the string taut. Directs the stone downward. Whirls it around, centrifugal, and then plunges it suddenly to the dirt. Witch divines a prophecy for him: doesn't look tired. Doesn't look worn.

Looks fierce. Charged.

Wolf tosses the stick aside, rising. Dirt sheafs off his knees. "You have my thanks," he says. Pause. "We'll meet again."

At the door, morning light throws his shadow back into the hut. Soot and smoke from little fires all over the village cannot mask the clarity of the sky, the cleanness of this world compared to the one he knows. Wolf draws a deep breath, scenting the air. Exhales as he starts to walk, following the witch's direction into the wilderness.

bride of stag

He moves quickly then, and when he speaks, her mouth twists. "Take care when you speak of the future, Son of Falcon," she tells him. "The gift of prophecy is not a merciful one."

Her knees unbend as she speaks, raising her to her full height. Taller than before, or he imagines it so: she does not fuss over his leaving, or outfit him with provisions. She has done him more than one great service this morning, and she knows it. He is a wolf, and she knows it.

And something in her does not want him to go. And she is unsettled, and disturbed, and clutches tight the pendulum in her palm. Watches him exit her hut, and scuffs her feet and her skirt-hems over the map he drew.

wolfman

Wolf pauses as she cautions him. Turns. Looks her in the eye. Says:

"We will meet again."

His hand aches to take hers. Settles for something else instead; a brief, curt nod. The door shuts behind him, takes his shadow with it.