you okay with me being a werewolf?

wolfman

Turns out wolf's exhausted. Sleeps through the night heavily, unwaking. Sometime after the dawn girl wakes. Girls picks up her phone and looks at the time and then dials a contact. Bedroom feels cool after the warmth of the bed so she crawls back under, cocoons herself while she talks softly over the line. Calls in sick to work.

Wolf wakes only a little. Only enough to turn over on his side, wrap a heavy arm around the girl. Pulls her close, close, nestled against him. She reaches a thin hand out, puts the phone down on the nightstand. Wolf paws at her hand, tries to pull it back to the warmth of the covers.

Maybe she pulls away. Maybe she seems a little sad. Still she comes back to him. Closes her eyes. He wraps his arm more securely around her, tucks them both in, and sleeps again.

--

Well past noon when he wakes up. Maybe girl's still there. Maybe she isn't. He yawns, though, sitting up. Pops his neck one way and then the other.

Sunlight falling through the blinds. Everything in his room so crisp and immediate and real, tangible, imperfect. A world away from the Underworld. A world away from medieval british-isles, or wherever it was that he was.

witch

Sleeps against him most of that night. Arm over him, body pressed to his. Sweats under the covers with his body heat against her, sweats into his clothes. Not that he'll be able to tell, holding them to his nose later. Won't make a difference. Might catch a hint of something, but it wouldn't be enough to track her.

Devon's phone goes off at ten, and Devon stirs, shifts away, and thinks for a moment, staring at the screen. Ends up calling work. Tells them in her hoarse, just-woke-up voice that she's sick today. They don't like it. They aren't happy with her. She thinks, again, that she's definitely going to get fired.

Sighs, and turns over, and lays her head against Rafael again. Closes her eyes and goes back to sleep, softly. Lightly. She's aware of it when Rafael unconsciously pulls her close, and gently wrests her hand from his grasp, and she is a little sad, and a little conflicted, but she sleeps anyway.

She's still there when he wakes up a couple of hours later. Still half-asleep. Opens her eyes as he starts moving around, unwinding his arms from her and stretching. Looks at him through her lashes.

Says nothing. But then: she wouldn't.

wolfman

Girl's still there. Somehow he thought she might not be. Might be up already. Might be brewing those gooey recipes again. Might be gone off to work. Wolf's glad to see her though. Stretches, rubs his face. Lays back again, turning on his side to face her.

She's not sleeping. She's half-asleep, but her eyes are half-open. He looks at her; him and his newly shorn hair, his newly shaven jaw.

"Thanks for staying with me," he says, voice rough with disuse. "Not just last night. All this time."

witch

Not good at receiving thank-yous when it matters.

She looks uncomfortable, though not dramatically so. Looks down at his chest and then closes her eyes again. Inhales and thinks she can smell some difference. Wonders if that's true: if he really does smell different when he's actually in his own body, as opposed to... sleepwalking. Whatever it was.

Devon's eyes open slowly, looking at him across the pillows.

"Was hard," she whispers, admitting it. "Felt... abandoned."

wolfman

What a sight. Those eyes opening. That shocking, vivid, saturated blue. Wolf can't help it; he reaches out. Cups her cheek.

"Sorry," he mutters. Little else to say, and he's not good with words anyway. "Didn't want to." Knows that sounds flimsy. Fake, even. If he really didn't want to, why did he? Tries to explain: "Had to. It was ... for you. Your spirit, in a past life."

witch

When he says he didn't want to, her jaw clenches. He can feel it, delicate thing that it is, because of the way he's touching her. This close, he can see it in her eyes, too. A deep flash, like lightning so far on the horizon that you count and count breathlessly, waiting for the roll of thunder to reach you.

"Just hurt," she says, with a tone that almost seems to acquiesce a little; all right. "I asked you to stay, and you wouldn't."

Another of those far-off flashes. Anger, there. Betrayal.

wolfman

"Don't think I could've," wolf says.

Pauses. Adds -- admits, "Maybe I should've tried harder. To stay."

witch

Under the covers, Devon's shoulder shrugs. "Doesn't matter," she says softly, not quite defeatist, far from cold. Still quiet. Still pillow-voiced. "If you could've chosen. That's what you would've done." Her shoulder tightens, her eyes stay on his, unwavering. "Don't hate you for it. Just hurts."

A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot.

wolfman

Wolf's eyebrows constrict together. He doesn't know how else to explain it, except to say it again:

"It was for you. Your spirit. Just a different body. She might've died. I had to. I'm sorry, but you're right. Would've chosen that. Had to."

witch

Her brow wrinkles. Not in anger, not in affront. It just wrinkles. A flicker there of something else, when he insists it was for her, because it wasn't fucking her. Wants him to stop saying it like they're the same, like a gift for that other someone was a gift to her, when that isn't how she sees it. That isn't how it feels. But she doesn't pull away in a rage. She just flashes like that,

and then wrinkles.

Devon's quiet for a while. Then gives a smallish shake of her head. "You want to tell me about it?"

wolfman

Wolf moves his shoulders a little. They're still under the covers. Big soft bed. Master bedroom seems so bright and airy by day. Can glean a sense of who his dam might have been, what she might have enjoyed, appreciated, liked, by looking at her residences. The dens she chose. The books still left behind on those shelves.

"Only if you want to hear about it. Don't need to get it off my chest or anything."

witch

"Might help," she says. Kind of quiet. Not about him getting it off his chest. Or her wanting to know. In fact, in a weird way, she doesn't want to know at all.

But it might help.

wolfman

Wolf's not sure about that. Still; she asks, and he's not one to deny her. Turns on his back, though. Faces the ceiling, as though this will make it easier.

Easier to describe what it was like, going back that last time. Going into the past. Going into the darkness. The Underworld; the price that was exacted from him. How unhesitatingly he paid it, and yet -- how unwilling he was to be parted from that ring. That took him by surprise, he muses. Didn't think it mattered to him at all.

Must have gotten it back, though. Still on his hand now, that thing. Heavy; almost crude in its angles and cut. Old. One of the only tangible connections he has to his family.

Tells her about the shadows, then, and how he solved that riddle. Tells her about the gatekeeper who wore the face of the Philodox, and the truth he had to tell to pass. Same truth he told girl a moment ago:

he was doing it for the witch.

--

Tells her about that terrible war-realm, too. The neverending death. The curious stagnation amidst all that chaos. The leaching away of his emotions -- and how, when he struggled to hold to them, they almost killed him.

Almost. But not quite.

Tells her about that strange little office too. The strange man he met there. The painful little confessions he had to make, dragged from him like molars pulled from the jaw. That he regretted hurting girl. That he regretted not going to his own father's funeral. Losing that entire half of his family tree, as he'd already lost the other half.

Tells her what came of that difficult gate; perhaps the hardest for him. Tells her of his ring restored, his sins -- if not absolved, then at least acknowledged. Cast into the light, where they seemed less deadly, less terrible. Tells her of how he left that place with a curious sense of hope and optimism, that maybe that which was damaged was not broken, and not lost. Just like his ring.

--

Tells her about the sixth gate, too. The easiest, the sweetest, the gentlest of them all. Just a projection of the girl. Of love and being loved. Of being home, quiet, in the dark. Says it in a few awkward, roughhewn, unpoetic words:

It was nice. Was just you and me living together. You were asleep, so I got into bed and slept.

--

And the darkness,

and the cub,

and the seventh gate. The sacrifice he made almost without thinking. Threw it out there because what else did he have to give? The way he died, so sudden and so insultingly painless he almost wasn't sure he was dead. The way he wandered afterward, looking for his body -- finding it, haunting it, until the wolves bore him to the witch and the witch

taught him how to speak again. Words scratched into the dirt. Affairs set in order. Revelations of past lives already dead and gone; his spirit and hers never once having met. The wolves bore his body away. The witch and him: they stayed behind. Talked, in that curious and half-wordless way, for such a short while. He told her about her reincarnation, a thousand years later. She told him it is what it is, in not so many words.

He could sense her loneliness, leaving.

It didn't stop him from leaving all the same.

--

"Had to get back here," he explains, quiet. Finishing up now. "Felt bad for her. Felt bad for myself. The me that lived then, when I lived and died and never knew her. But that wasn't me anymore. And that wasn't you either. Just our past lives and all their mistakes.

"Had to get back here before I made another one and lost you. Was scared of that. That maybe this is the one life we have together, and I'd already lost you."

witch

All these gates. Sacred sevens. The opening of chakras. Devon lies in bed next to him, watching him carefully now that he's taken his hand off her face, listening. She doesn't interrupt. She finds that she's genuinely curious. She finds that the longer it goes on, the less distant she feels from him. Her hand comes to rest on top of his body, right over his solar plexus. As he is telling her about the war, the trenches, the bloodshed, the heart. As he tells her about regaining his family's ring, still now on his hand. The absolution.

There's a little pull of her mouth, fond and aching: somewhere in there, his subconscious or some spirit knew that she wouldn't still be with him if she didn't forgive him. Hurts a little to forgive him. Scares her to death.

She wonders a little how confused she and this witch were in his mind, even at the sixth gate. If he was climbing into bed with her, or with the other her. If, in the spirit world, there was a difference at all. She doesn't pull her hand away. Just listens to him. Hears how he puts it: living together.

--

Rafael tells her about the blinded cub and his painless death and Devon is tense next to him, like she has to hold still so the lance going through her doesn't tear her up too badly. She exhales softly, relaxes slowly, listening in even greater curiosity about this witch from another time, capable of communication with the dead, capable of imbuing a stick with some kind of force so that a ghost could touch it, capable of so many things, it sounds like.

She wonders if she has that inside of her.

There is a small voice, mostly hidden, whispering

you know you do.

--

Devon's hand moves softly, scritching her fingernails gently on his chest. She's quiet for a while. Takes in what he's said. How he felt bad for the witch in that other time, how he never knew her in that life but maybe it was for the best, it wasn't him,

she thinks that version of him might have tried to burn that version of her at the stake. Or, being a wolf: just torn her to pieces.

--

After a long time, perhaps long enough that he's looking at her again:

"I ever tell you why I left Boston?"

wolfman

Isn't looking at her. Is a little afraid to maybe. Can't explain it. Maybe it's all those truths he spilled. All those secrets; seven gates, seven tests, seven mirrors of his own soul.

He stares at the ceiling. That noble profile, those strong bones. He is what he is, even if he hardly realizes it himself. Son of Falcon. Scion of kings.

Turns when she speaks. Covers her hand with his. Looks at her, pillow to pillow. Shakes his head a little, mute.

witch

"Lots of the wolves didn't... like me," she says, stumbling a bit. "Because I don't smell. Makes them antsy. Being witchy -- the herbs and cards and spells and things -- didn't help, even though plenty of Fianna kin do stuff like that."

She doesn't mention, though she has to know: plenty of people, Fianna or no, kinfolk or no, shake up herbs and read cards and so on. But few who claim they can cure a hangover with their mixture really can. Few who slather arnica on a bruise find it gone hours later. Few who draw tarot cards or read tea leaves or dangle a pendulum discover that what they see, what they sense, really is the truth,

really is the future.

Devon takes a little breath, shallower than she wants it to be, less steady than she'd like. "But they found out about... other stuff. And it was just safer after that to get out of town."

wolfman

Eyebrows pull together. Flashes instantly to that picture she sent. That wolf staring at her, intense, distrusting. Under the covers his hand runs up her arm. Covers her shoulder. Wraps around her then. He pulls her close, moves closer as he does.

"Hate to think of you out there on your own." Says it gruffly; like he doesn't want to admit it matters. "Wolves hating on you for what you are. Even hate thinking of that time in the alley. Sometimes I catch myself wondering what would have happened if I didn't know you. If you didn't buttdial me.

"Want to protect you. Doesn't mean I want to own you or watch your every move. Just want to keep you safe."

witch

Rafael gets growly. Not at her, not even that loud, but that's how she thinks of it. He pulls at her, she can tell he wants to glomp her up and wrap himself around her, but gently -- gently, after he's told her that this thing drives him a wee bit crazy -- she reaches up to his hand by her shoulder and moves it away. Holds his hand on top of the covers between them instead.

"Well, I might've died," she says, regarding her life-saving buttdial. "Or... desperate enough, I might've done something."

wolfman

She might've died --

"Don't say that."

-- or she might've done something.

Curiously, that -- the very thing that made all those Bostonian wolves distrust her -- relaxes him. Smooths the lines between his eyebrows a little. He doesn't try to glomp her up. Pull her close. He smiles. Just a little; corner of his mouth quirking.

"Maybe you should learn," he says. "Don't think anyone here's going to hate you for it."

witch

"Dammit, Rafa, I'm trying to tell you --"

Devon, after that burst of exasperation, exhales a breath. She holds his hand on the covers between them.

"You don't know that," she says, levelly. "You know me. But Rafa..."

Her hand tightens on his for a moment, a firm and quick squeeze.

The doors to his closet and bathroom and the hallway fly open. The drawers of the nightstand yank out so fast that they nearly tear free from their runners. The blinds on the window snap up. All at once, with rattling and rushes of air and, when it's over, the soft thudding of the bedroom door against the interior wall, reverbating a little bit as it recovers from the sudden motion.

Devon's hand has relaxed on his again. More or less.

"...some people get scared."

wolfman

Wolf isn't scared per se.

Wolf is startled as fuck, though. Reacts in an instant, flinging the covers back, snapping up tense and taut and all-together, every muscle, every sinew in concert. Springs over her, crouched and protective, teeth bared; halfway to warform in an eyeblink.

No attack, though. No insane spirits here to rip at them, gouge out their eyes. No Spirals shattering through the windows.

Just girl. Just her magic. Penny drops. Wolf looks at her with amazement. Melts slowly back to his other form, the one she knows so well. He sits back. Tilts his head. Can almost see his hackles coming down, fur smoothing.

"Didn't know you could do that," he says. "When did you learn?"

witch

Makes Devon flinch, how fast he moves, how aggressively. Doors and drawers and windowblinds rattle slightly in sympathy as Rafael ends up braced and bracketed over her, newfound heaviness causing the mattress to dip a bit.

She stares at him, eyes wide, lips together.

The room goes still. Doors and drawers and windowblinds stop moving. Rafael does not see any enemies lurching into the room. Turns to look at her. Mattress readjusts as he shrinks. Shifts a little, but only a little -- it is a fine, thick, heavy thing -- as he sits back.

Didn't know she could do that.

Devon takes a breath. "Well," she says, before exhaling. Then she does, slowly, silently. "Didn't learn, really. Just... started happening."

wolfman

Wolf thinks about this for a while. Beat or two go by. He settles a little more, sinking down to sit on his heels.

"How much can you move? Can you ... do you have fine control over it?"

witch

Devon is lying back on the pillows, watching him with some wariness in her eyes. Not fear, not terror, but... carefulness. Gauging him, seeing how he responds as he responds. Her shoulders give a little shrug, rustling on the bed.

"That was actually a lot. It... starts to strain, when stuff is heavier or bigger. I started being able to bend or change things a little just a few months ago, instead of just moving them around."

Her lips press together a moment. She licks them. "Remember those things in the alleyway? And the oil?" He nods, or he doesn't. He guesses, or he doesn't. She adds: "I couldn't reach the bottle from where I was. So I threw it. I just didn't touch it."

wolfman

Wolf's eyes darken a little at the mention of the alleyway. Came so close to losing her and he barely even knew her. Even now he can't explain why he went to her, so fast, hoping she wouldn't guess how much he wanted to protect her. Being rough with her, cruel to her, just so she wouldn't guess.

He shifts, crawls forward, flops down again. Rolls onto his back beside her, exhaling.

"I remember," he says. They're side by side; outside of his arm touching hers. He lifts his hand. Swings it thoughtlessly over; runs the backs of his knuckles over her skin wherever he can touch her.

"Witch in the past could move things too," he says. "Think she was stronger than you. Had better control too. And think she could actually ... change things. At least, she could make a stick something a ghost could touch."

witch

Bed shifts again. She thinks briefly, fleetingly, of how much he always moves around. Even when he's still there's a brimming energy to him, always a hair away from eruption. It almost makes her smile, but not right now. Not the way she feels at the moment, not wary but... careful.

He touches her hand, though. Or her arm. Moves his hand so that it touches her. And something about the backs of his knuckles strikes her at once as titillatingly erotic and deeply comforting. Now she does smile, a little, even if it's got a shadow to it.

"I think lots of things had more power in the past. Or came by it easier," Devon says quietly. Is quiet for a little while.

"Is it... is this okay? Are you okay with it?"

wolfman

Not like he doesn't understand why she asks. Not like he doesn't remember the look in Stalks in Snow's eyes when he said magic like a dirty word. Not like he doesn't remember the same look in that photographed wolf's eyes.

Wolf gets it. Wolf remembers, with an ancestor's fast-fading memories, what men used to do to witches. What wolves used to do.

His knuckles brush over her skin, back and forth. A span of forearm from elbow not quite to wrist. He turns, looks at her across the pillows.

"Yeah," quietly. "You okay with me being a werewolf?"

witch

That actually

makes Devon choke.

She starts to laugh; it bubbles up and she chokes on it, enough that she has to cough, and then it just spills out. The laughter is thin, but not shallow. It's rushing with relief, the sound of her breath almost tangible with it.

Devon turns in the bed, moves over him a little, kisses his mouth. Softly.

wolfman

All of a sudden she laughs. He grins. Rare expression on him: a full grin, nothing held back. Makes him look -- not younger, not quite, but less ferocious. Not so heavy, so intense, such a hot-burning flame.

She turns. He shifts his shoulders a little too, and when her mouth meets his, his hand drifts down to take hers. The kiss is gentle, and it is soft. Parts just long enough for him to whisper, " 'Course I'm okay with it."

witch

Their hands, brushing together, finally link. Hers winds through his, fingers lacing. She furthers and deepens that contact,

and furthers and deepens that kiss. He speaks against her lips and she doesn't say I know but she knows.

wolfman

Fingers lace. Hands link. Palms press together. Kiss deepens.

And deepening, rouses him. That much almost seems inevitable. He rises up on an elbow. Leans over her. Touches her with his free hand, his palm and his fingers opening over her side, his heat seeping through that borrowed shirt. His. Big on her. He laughs a little into that kiss.

Sinks back. Moves her over her. Pulls her atop him, pressed chest to chest. Now he's tugging at that too-large t-shirt, pulling it up over her head. Sunlight makes the room bright. She makes the room bright, nevermind how dark her hair, nevermind all that dark dramatic makeup and those big boots. Not that she's wearing either right now.

His hands cup her breasts when they're revealed. Almost like he wants to keep her warm. He lifts up to kiss her again and they meet in the middle. He rubs his face against hers, heavily affectionate. Slides his hands around and down her back. Pushes down the waistband of those equally-misfitted boxers.

witch

Devon feels him press into the kiss as he lifts himself up. Gradually, one motion flowing into the next, she turns onto her side again. He leans over her, touches her through his own shirt, and she doesn't understand his chuckling but nor does she care. It's been a week or so for him, as far as his mind is concerned. Been more like a month for her. And she's breathing in deeply, steadying herself, even with his hand just covering her ribs.

Pulls her over him but as soon as he sinks back she's climbing onto him, really, so what's the difference. Shirt comes off, sweeps her hair up, gets tossed to the side. Devon holds herself up over him, her eyes already shimmering slightly, her lashes heavy.

More kissing. Her mouth is wet now, as though she's so hungry that she salivates. Lifts her hips as soon as his fingertips touch elastic, draws them upward as he pushes the boxers away. Devon spreads her thighs over his lap, moving her mouth to his neck, making a soft sound against his throat.

Missed him. But doesn't say it. Licks his skin instead, sucks on his earlobe.

wolfman

Missed him. He knows it. Just like she knew he was okay with it. They knows things about each other now; imagine that. Must make them a real couple. Boyfriend. Girlfriend.

Mates, said the other witch, a millennium gone.

Wolf's eyes close. He missed her too. Been a week but sometimes feels like longer. Sometimes his want for her burns like fire, like acid. Keeps him up when she's not around. She sucks his earlobe and it makes him growl. Makes him take her face between his hands, holds her there as he kisses her. It's almost savage, but

he remembers: be gentle. She just wants him to be gentle with her.

So he gentles. That kiss turns deeper, lusher. She's naked already, and he was always naked. He pulls her down; she finds him hard. He grinds up against her lower abdomen, and between her thighs. Lets go of that kiss and falls back, looks at her with fierce eyes, black pupils. Glances down, their bodies together, the contrast, her skin and his. His hands sweep her sides, hold her by the waist. His thumb passes over the dip of her navel. Traces a diagonal up; rubs over her nipple. Then he's on her again, lifting up to kiss her mouth, kiss her neck. Wraps his arm around her, that fragile thin body of hers; everything's fragile in his destructive paws. He wants to flip her under but he doesn't. He pulls her down, urging her without words. She knows what he wants.

witch

There's nothing right now that she's resisting, or hesitating about. He touches her face and kisses her mouth, pulling her from his neck; she relents, moaning into his mouth and urging his hands over her breasts, pushing at covers with one foot. No idea that wanting her could ever keep him up, no idea how bad it burns. Just knows that she always wants him. Just knows that she's really, really... into him. And that it's been a month since he's been here in his body, steady enough, long enough, to do anything with her. Knows that it's been a month since they've been alone together, because no one knew if she would be safe with him.

Soon as the covers are completely out of the way, soon as he's pulling her body closer, rubbing his dick against her skin, she's opening her legs and stroking her pussy against him. Gasps, tearing her mouth free from his for a moment. Moans as the head of his cock slides just so against her clit; grinds there, hips swiveling in a circle. Her eyes are closed when he looks at her; her head is tilted slightly back, the skin across her breastbone flushed already with arousal, with heat. He runs his hands over her like that and she just goes on rubbing against him,

until he strokes her nipple like that. Devon shudders, a shiver that goes from her shoulders to her round little ass. She's panting when he kisses her again, moaning a little as Rafael's body comes flush to hers again. Puts her hands on his face, kisses him while he's there, doing urgent things with his hands that have something to communicate to her, probably. But all it does is slide his cock harder, closer, against her cunt. Which is so hot. Which is so wet.

He knows what she wants.

wolfman

He feels so protective of her. As though passion, wanting, hands grappling for purchase and bodies winding together somehow amplify that fleeting fragility he sees in her. It's something about how she responds, and how responsive she is. It's something about those autonomic reactions, flush of her skin, shudder of her body.

He can't help it. He wants to be close to her, cover her, keep her safe. It's new. It's all new to him: to feel like this here and now, in the bedroom, in the bed, where before all he felt was hunger. Ravenous, all-encompassing lust, until he was tearing at her clothes, pulling her down, pushing her down, biting her, mounting her.

Different this time. Different, when his arms encircle her. Different, when he turns after her: puts her under him. Feels a little like the way he shielded her before, when he thought some unseen force was assailing them. Feels a little like that to be covered like this, kept beneath the wall of his body like this,

even as he's moving between her legs. Even as she's opening her thighs to him, shivering like that. He touches her. He pulls back a little to look, to align, and then it's his chest against hers again, his arms around her again; his mouth pressed to her neck as he pushes into her, slow. Groans deep in his chest to feel her -- tight, then opening, then letting him in. He knows how long it's been; for him, and even more so for her. This time, neither of them ask the other if they've been faithful. This time, it's implied; it's taken on faith.

witch

Rafael wanted to flip her under him and fuck her. Didn't. Offered himself to her, hers for the taking, and she didn't, but not because she didn't want to take him. Rafael turns her under him, not like a fish, not like a savage. Just wraps his arms around her and rolls them both to the bed, covers her, finds himself encirled by her legs and her arms. Her head tilts back as though to urge him to kiss her neck, taste her throat. It isn't submission, it isn't surrender, but an invitation. Come in, come in.

Devon can open her eyes again. Looks up at him as he draws back. She looks drunk. She feels drunk. She thinks she should say something, maybe, in case he's hesitating, wondering; but no. He lowers his mouth to her neck and presses his lips there, toothless, gentle, when he pushes his cock into her cunt. And it's been a month and she's tight and she's happy and warm, so fucking warm, and she wonders if he's always that hard or if it's just been a goddamn month. Wants to moan but all she can do is open her mouth, struggle to breathe. Feel him. Heat rushes through her, right to the place they're joined. Makes her lightheaded for a moment.

Her ankles cross behind him. Her heels press to him. Urge him on. Fuck me. Fuck me.

wolfman

Girl isn't even making a sound. That's okay. Wolf gets it. Feels the same. Overcome; swept up. His arms are wrapped around her. Under her. Presses her close and he can't seem to let go; wouldn't want to. Bows his head to her shoulder, his mouth to her skin -- open, a soundless gasp, a firm and gentle press of his teeth, now, as her legs fold around him. Pull him deeper.

Is it always like this? Maybe it's never like this. Maybe it's never been like this for anyone, ever; maybe they invented this. Wolf doesn't know. He doesn't keep track of such things. He knows what she's telling him and that's enough for him.

Fucks her, then. Not much room for motion between them and that's okay too. Fucks her anyway: heavy and forceful but not reckless, never that. This time he's with her, aware, attuned. Is gentle with her, in his incomplete, rough way: which is to say he's careful; cares to try not to hurt her.

Watches her when he can, hungry for the sight of her, color of her eyes, parting of her lips. Buries his face against the side of her neck when he can't and just moves with her; listens to the sound of her breathing, those little noises she makes. Means something when her legs tighten. Means something when her hands grasp at his back, or grip his biceps.

Means something when he pulls back to see her, too. Means something when he kisses her, panting against her mouth at the height of it. She loops her arms around his neck and he goes back down to her. Wants to say something, find the right words, but the well runs dry. All he has is his body, and hers, and what they do to each other.

witch

It's a reunion. There's the fairytale, epic-story conclusion: hero returning from a quest and making love to his woman, but... that's not what this is. They've both been through a trial. One was, from all angles, a journey. The other could best be compared to a prison sentence. There are many kinds of trials. There are many forms of suffering.

Devon, for her part, fucks Rafael like this is her freedom. Like this is her reward for a long wait, and this is her reassurance after all that fear, all that unknowing. This is something she can do to reaffirm that she can do something. Her voice is heard and her touch is felt. She's no longer helpless to connect with him, helpless in the face of an altogether uncertain future. Even the way it began: the way he urged her, and the way she in turn urged him to come to her. Come back to her from some time out of mind, and seek her as fervently as he sought whatever he needed to do in that other world, that other time. Prove to her, in a way, that he was there. That it was real. That he wanted to be here, and nowhere else.

There's also this: she fucks him like she hasn't been with anyone for weeks. Because she hasn't. And the truth is that Devon has never been as slutty or as free-spirited (depending on your outlook) as her clothing implies. Or as her mooching implies. Or as her drinking or her sleeping in woods implies. This hunger and thirst for Rafael is... unusual. And uncanny. And swallows her whole sometimes. Eclipses her. Moons never show their dark side, but sometimes they fall under a shadow.

--

They're both sweating by the end of it. Blankets tousled and rumpled away. Hair curls and sticks to her brow, her temples, her cheek. A strand is stuck in her mouth in the aftermath and she rubs her cheek against him but it doesn't quite get it; he hooks a finger and drags it off her skin, brushes it back, letting his hand and arm fall limp again, covering her.

Devon's mouth is open and her eyes are closed. She is catching her breath, and cooling off. The room isn't warm but Rafael is. She is. She's so hot that she's more pink than white, panting as though that will help her heart slow down. Hands are still on his arms, holding him. Afraid, in a way, that there will be some subtle shift and he'll be gone again.

She's always a little afraid,

in some way,

that there will be some subtle shift,

and he'll be gone.

--

Gradually the world steadies. And her skin cools. And her heart slows, and her breath eases. Devon opens her eyes, turning her head on the pillow to look at the long, heavy body stretched out next to hers on the bed. Closes her eyes slowly, opens them with what seems like reluctance a half-moment later. Her hand lifts and turns, the backs of her knuckles stroking his cheek once, softly. She feels a sudden, sharp pain in her heart: that he was gone so long, and how bad it hurt. She tries to tell the pain that it's in the past now, but that has never helped her. Or him, really: pain being in the past somehow does not leech it of its strength. It's over now is precious little comfort to their cynical, skeptical little hearts.

What happened once might happen again. Which is true of everything, but somehow seems insurmountable when it comes to love,

and the loss of it.

She breathes in, slowly and deeply and through her nose. Exhales just a tad faster through those self-same nostrils as she rolls toward him again, tucking herself close, their bodies a fun-house mirror of misproportion and distortion, light and dark, soft and hard. Male and female, air and earth.

And even though it's lunchtime, she says: "Brekkie?"

and smiles.

back from the past.

witch

Could have, didn't.

Something took him there, and something brought him back. It would take a lifetime, two lifetimes, a hundred, for him to understand the scope, the impact, the full resolutions promised by the journey that he did not will to happen but

stubbornly

refused to ignore.

--

Devon wriggles. She's wearing pajamas, more or less: a soft grey t-shirt edged in that pink lace, a pair of capri-length pajama pants. More decent than a little nightgown or something. He can feel her socks, though, fuzzy things, resting against his shins. He's hugging her more tightly and it wakes her up and she kicks her heel against his shin. Sort of gently.

"Stoppit," she mutters, not really awake, not realizing that he's back. That he's been gone for weeks off and on and now he's back. She just yawns, and nestles down further in the blankets, hugging his arms tight around her even though she JUST TOLD HIM --

Her eyes open a little. Blearily. Slowly. Her back is to his chest. She exhales, roughly.

"Rafa?" she asks, turning, quickly, looking for him.

spiritual wolfman

Wolf makes this sound -- whuff almost, but no. It's a laugh, low, joyful.

"Yeah." He nuzzles the back of her neck. Draws back a little. She turns. He's looking at her. Beard and uncut hair, yes, but: his eyes, sharp and present, focused on hers. "Back now."

He gathers her close again. Closer, closer. Lays his brow to hers, closing his eyes.

"Devon," he murmurs. "Missed you so much."

witch

Skinny arms around his neck, holding him suddenly and tightly, crushingly. Thick hair everywhere, all over his dumb face.

"Back back?" she insists, shaking a little.

spiritual wolfman

Skinny arms around his neck. Almost called her skinny thing, truth is. Almost called her that affectionately, fondly, adoringly; as if he didn't have a better name for her.

His arms wrapped tight around her. Biceps against her sides, forearms folded over her smooth back. Her hair's everywhere and he buries himself in it. Laughs again, soft, maybe a little unsteady.

"Yeah. Promise."

witch

Holds him tighter, for that. Guardian watches impassively through golden eyes in the darkened room. Devon doesn't like this. Has trouble sleeping here, hates eating here, isn't a fan of any of this. It's late March and she's tired of visiting Cold Crescent to see her possibly-gone-forever boyfriend.

No wonder she shakes. And exhales unsteadily, unwilling to say or do more at first. Swallows, instead, says nothing for a few moments, until: "Let's go. They said if you came back you'd have to get checked out by a theurge or something before you could go, but... let's go."

spiritual wolfman

"If," wolf mutters, derisively. Guardian with his golden eyes gets a foul look. Never mind that he's there to protect them both. Nevermind that he was girl's first and last line of defense if wolf decided to flip out in his time-traveling trance.

Wolf sits up, then. Body feels weak and new. Covers collapse under their own gravity and he discovers he's stripped bare. Sends the Guardian another uncharitable glance as he swings bare feet off the bed, rumples sheets over his bare lap to conceal some modicum of modesty.

"They got my clothes anywhere?"

witch

In the car, Devon doesn't have to adjust the seat, but the passenger seat is still pulled forward. He slides back, and Devon pulls out of the garage, and takes him back to his place.

Which is dark, and cool, and empty. She hasn't been staying here. She hasn't come here while he's been 'gone', unless she had a good reason. And she hasn't really had a good reason, except to bring something for him. Not that he asked for anything. But fresh clothes, occasionally. Sometimes he would mindlessly change into them, if there was nothing else available.

There is no dirty laundry. The maid has come and taken care of that.

Devon has the keys in her hand when she exits the car. Watches Rafael carefully as he comes around, like he can't just wait for her at the door between the garage and the house, has to come to the car door. She's uncomfortable; he knows that. Can sense it, almost smell it, even though she has no scent at all. This time she doesn't take his hand. Maybe digs in her backpack to pretend she doesn't see it. Maybe just hesitates, discomfort written across her face. One way or another it gets across that she doesn't want to take his hand right now.

They go inside.

wolfman

They go inside --

they don't. Wolf arrests there at the door. Girl's digging in her backpack. Wolf's frowning now. His hand remains there, outstretched, for seconds on end before he lets it fall.

Quiet: "What's wrong?"

witch

So they stay in the garage. Colder than inside. He reaches for her and she looks down, getting chapstick out of her backpack. Zips it up and his hand is still waiting and the shadow of a wince passes through her eyes, but she doesn't take his hand. They stand there. She's waiting for him to just turn an walk inside. The fact that he stood there waiting to take her hand and isn't walking now feels like the schism has already happened. The crime's been committed.

Devon's eyebrows draw together, painfully. "You've been gone for a month."

wolfman

Wolf doesn't quite understand. Eyebrows knit; that's a human expression. Head tilts; that's not.

"I'm back now," he says.

witch

"You are," she says, and exhales. "But it was a long time, and it was weird, and --"

Devon cuts herself off. She closes her eyes a moment, reaches up, rubs at her brow with the heels of her hands. "I just want to go back to sleep, somewhere that isn't that shitty little room again. Can we just talk tomorrow?"

wolfman

Girl rubs at her brow. Both hands. A moment later wolf puts his hands on her face too. Takes her face between his palms, pulls her closer. Wraps one of those heavy paws behind her head the way he does, like he's trying to shelter her from some unseen storm.

Touches his brow to hers. Exhales softly.

"Sorry I left you alone," he says. "Didn't want to. Glad I'm with you again." Lets go. Lets space open up. "We'll talk tomorrow," he adds -- agrees. Reaches for the door.

witch

Devon doesn't want to be held, though. Not right now, not standing in the garage, agitated, things stirred up that she wanted to leave alone -- at least for a night. She exhales, reaching up, taking his hands. Removes them from her, but holds onto his wrists, his hands, looking up at him.

"Please don't right now," she says, very quietly, when he says he's sorry he left her alone. Cuts him right off. "Don't... talk about it right now. I just want to leave it, all right?"

wolfman

Truth is that strains his patience. Wolf doesn't have much to speak of anyway. There's flexion in his jaw; something taut about his face.

Backs off, though. Nods, wordlessly. They come apart. Last point of contact dissolves. Wolf pushes the door to his house open. Smells clean in there, but unlived-in. Dark, too, though the lights come up without a flicker when he hits the switch.

witch

She can sense his anger. Is exhausted by it right now, feels attacked by it, and unfairly. But just looks at him, aching like that, until he nods. Steps a little bit away. She doesn't let go of his wrists at first. Lets go of one, and slides her hand into the other. Stays close, resting against his bicep and arm wrapped around his arm, walking inside with him. Into the kitchen, which he lights up.

Can see obviously that she hasn't been here. No pot of herbal goop anywhere, none of her laundry sitting on top of the washer. Devon reaches out and flicks the light back off. They go toward the stairs, and as they start heading up she thinks to ask:

"You hungry?"

wolfman

Wolf finds himself missing those signs of her presence. Goop. Laundry. Faint herbal smell in the air, which takes the place of her actual and nonexistent scent. Hell, he even misses the giant mess she'd made of her room.

Lights go off again. Girl stays close to him, which soothes him a little. Calms that howling beast inside that wants to know why, why, why, why is she so far away. After so long, after so far, after all those lifetimes they might've lost. His hand on hers is strong, grip firm.

"Yeah." He is hungry. Realizes it as she asks and as he answers. Pauses, one foot on the stairs. "Probably no leftovers in the fridge. Think I've got frozen pizzas and ramen though."

witch

She's a step over him on the steps. He's down there and he's hungry and a faint flicker of a smile half-shows on her face in the darkness. She squeezes his hand. "I'm just sleepy," she tells him, soft. "You mind if I just... take a shower and get back in bed? You can eat in there. I don't care."

wolfman

"Naw. Go ahead." His hand squeezes her back. Means something, that. He thinks it must mean something: that soft physical communication, one hand to another. "I'll be up in a second."

witch

She breathes in deep, nods. "Okay," says Devon. Squeezes his hand one more time, lets go. Heads upstairs.

A few minutes later he hears his door open. Hears the window crack open as well, fresh air circulating into his bedroom. Hears her backpack thump down. Hears the shower go on. She knows her way around his place. She lived here for months, after all. And nearly every time they had sex in this house it was in that bedroom, in that bed.

Been a month. A few days for him. A month for her. No wonder she feels so far away.

--

Shower goes on, lasts maybe five or six minutes before Devon gets out, drying herself off. Hard to hear anything past that, but easy to imagine her getting back into her pajamas, climbing into that bed with its clean sheets and smooth covers, fixed that way by the maid who knows how long ago.

He can hear her sneeze, once.

wolfman

Wolf stays downstairs. Heats up the oven. Rips two DiGiornos out of their boxes, claps them into the oven.

While she showers, and while the food heats up, he goes upstairs. Maybe she hears the bedroom door open. Certainly, if she looks, she can see him. Walks into the en-suite. Goes to the sinks. Some strange shyness keeps him from looking at her in that spacious glass cube of a shower, though he's surely aware of her. His cheeks flush. She can see that too because he starts shaving; running the same electric buzzer over his jaw, and then -- dialing it just a touch higher -- over his head.

Leans over the sink. Shears off all that extraneous hair, all the detritus built up from a month out of sync with his own body. Inspects his reflection afterward. Almost hard to recognize him like that, hair and beard both mowed down to a bristle. It'll grow back.

Wolf gathers up all his discarded fur. Scoops it into a wastebin. Walks out of the room again, shutting the door behind him.

--

She gets out of the shower. He hears her footsteps light overhead. Hears that little sneeze that makes him smile. He's still waiting on his pizza; wishes he'd just put it in the microwave instead. Peeks in a couple times. Gives up, eventually, and goes back up the stairs. Looks at her in his bed. Strips off his clothes and steps into the shower, stays in there longer than she did. Steam filters into the room. Slow-growing smell of pizza, too.

Clean, when he comes out. Wolf's skin tans easily enough, but he's so fair now after a month without the sun. Warmth and scrubbing has made him flushed and rosy. He wraps a towel around his waist, inspects his new reflection again. Brushes his teeth and then pads out of the bathroom.

"Pizza's about done," he tells her, if she's still awake. "Gonna go bring it up. Enough for you, if you want some."

witch

Devon does see him. She's unsettled, but he isn't staring at her, looking at her. She sees him not looking at her. Sees him just shaving. And a faint smile tightens her lips. She goes on showering. When she comes out, wrapped in a towel, she reaches up and touches the hair on top of his head. Shakes her head.

"I could have just trimmed that, you know," she says, but that's all. She goes to put on her pajamas, and he goes back downstairs.

Truth be told, Devon falls rapidly asleep once she's in bed. Her hair is still wet, thick as it is. She's dressed in a pair of his shorts and one of his shirts from the closet, because all she had to change into were her pajamas from Cold Crescent and she changed into those after working all evening. But as soon as she lays down, and sneezes, she's falling asleep within moments.

That's what he sees when he comes upstairs. The shower doesn't wake her. She turns over when he comes nearby, but doesn't wake.

wolfman

Wolf catches her hand on its way down. Gives it a squeeze. "You're tired," he says,

as if she couldn't have done it tomorrow. As if he couldn't have waited.

--

She's asleep when he gets upstairs. She's asleep when he gets out of the shower. So he doesn't talk to her. He goes downstairs and he turns off the oven. Takes the pizzas out, puts them on two large plates. Carries them upstairs, along with a 2-liter coke. No cups. Apparently intends to drink from the bottle.

Bed dips as he climbs on. Sits crosslegged on the mattress, one pizza on his lap, the other nearby. There's no TV in here. He doesn't know where his phone is. He just sits and eats, silent and ravenous, while the girl sleeps nearby.

Nice to have her near. Reminds him of the sixth gate. Reminds him of how it was before they fought, and she moved out. Wolf thinks again of that life past; how he never even knew her. How they never found each other.

witch

The bed's motion does wake her a little. She makes a noise, not quite a protest or an acknowledgement but... just a noise. Sighs and rolls over, facing him but not looking at him. Sleeps in his bed, comfortably, in her own thoughts, her own dreams.

Eventually he finishes eating. Probably eats it all. Devon stirs here and there, but never fully wakes. But he pushes things off the bed, sets them aside. Eventually, after whatever other tasks he wants to complete as he re-settles in his own body, he comes to bed. Gets under the covers.

Finds her rolling toward him, half-awake but not really, eyes half-open but barely seeing. She flicks them over his face. She closes her eyes again, arm over his chest, tucking herself against his side.

"Love you, Rafa," she mutters, drifting away again.

wolfman

Wolf doesn't eat it all. He's a wolf, not a pig.

Does eat most though. Eats a whole pizza. Eyes the other. Tears off half and eats it. Puts a napkin over the rest; sets it over on the nightstand in case girl woke up hungry. Guzzles coke from the bottle. Screws the cap on, puts that on the nightstand too.

Goes to the bathroom. Brushes his teeth. Washes his hands. Comes back, tossing his towel on the floor. Girl sleeps through it all, deep and complete. Eventually, wolf turns out the lights. Eventually, wolf gets in under the covers.

Lies on his back, looking at the dim shadows on the ceiling. Girl rolls over. Moves close. Her arm wraps over his chest. Skinny arm. Skinny thing. He wraps his hand over her forearm; his arm around her. She tucks herself against his side, near the warmth of his body.

"Too," he whispers. Closes his eyes.

a gathering for the remains.

the lost ones

Whatever faces them, it takes that as an answer. So, holding tight to the cub's arm, and feeling his arm held tight in return, Rafael gives up his life.

There are no promises. There's no assurance that everyone will be okay, or that his death will mean anything. He is there one moment, alive and cognizant and angry and afraid and brave and imperfect, and then whatever 'he' is has ended. No more bravery then, but also no more fear. No more anger.

No more pleasure and no more shame. No more self. No more guilt. No more sadness, but also no more love. There's nothing in him that could lie or cheat or hide, and if there was still truth in him to tell, he's no longer there to tell it. It dies with him. The silent and invisible chain tethering him to this existence is cut, snipped as neatly and quickly as a thread. He cannot even reflect on the fragility of life. Someone else will have to make the comparison between an intricate spider's web and a simple breeze, and how quickly and easily and entirely it can all be destroyed.

He just dies.

He's just dead.

--

Outside of this, the cub is suddenly touching a dead body. Holding tight and imagining he is still holding her tight, but he is limp. And falling. She catches him, stronger than she looks, but her knees buckle from the force. She holds onto him as he drops to the stone ground, and she looks up at the gatekeeper. Straight on.

--

Outside of this, a shuddering cub finds herself clutching a dead and cooling corpe against her knees. They are in the mud. It is raining again. Two nights have already passed. She sees a flower, a small thing, white and five-petaled, as silvery-white as the moon overhead. It has not set, but it blurs in her vision. The points of the little flower fade in her vision, disappearing into shadows.

She wants to howl, but the part of her born human and unnamed by wolves cannot bear to hold a shape other than the one that matches his right now. So she screams. Hollers. Shouts in the rain in fury. It's unfair. It's so unfair. Shouldn't a life, one of their lives, be worth more than spring?

Isn't a life too high a cost for a stupid prank?

Isn't it too high a price to keep two stupid tribes from going to war?

--

It takes hours for Rafael's spirit to stir from its shock. To trek aimlessly through darkness, searching for his body. Some instinct that is not carnal, not even physical, drives him: when he finds his body he will find the ones left behind who perform the rites. They will sing to him. Their voices will tell him what he's supposed to do next. Where he goes. He has to listen carefully. He has to find his body. His mind is a numb thing, with a single and all-encompassing purpose. So he wanders in and out of time, and in and out of hauntings. He searches.

Finds himself in the woods. There he is! On the ground, naked but for a signet ring. Spirit climbs around body but can't find a way in. Can't connect soul to limbs and move them. Can hear, though. Can sort of see, though through a shifting fog: red-haired cub talking to wolves. White wolves, red wolves, black ones, silvery ones. He sees Fair Sky there, clad in white, her face healing from a myriad of razor-sharp cuts to the face that smell of silver to him. She's been mutilated. Will heal. He counts seven of each: no one else dead for this rite.

Just him. Well, he was alone.

Cub's eyes are blasted out. Those pretty blue eyes have gone white, the color bled out of them. She looks nowhere as she speaks. He is aware of arguments. Punishments being bandied about. Stalks in Snow still wants her punished. Fianna snap that she is blind, what else does he want? Spring came. It's done. The rite is concluded. Accuse him of his own gate's failure, his pride. He has to be held back by his own kind. Fair Sky shouts a warning to all of them.

--

They're taking his body away. No songs! No rites done. But he is being lifted, and has to chase after it. Has to push at a clinging fog that threatens to drag him into darkness. Fair Sky and the cub, nameless in this time, have picked him up. Take him somewhere. Fianna and Fangs are separated. No one has decided anything.

He cannot tell where they are taking him until he feels her. The air around him is suddenly air. The pulling shadows retreat, suddenly, twisting away from him as though in pain. He nearly trips over a ring of white stones that glow, throbbingly, and warningly...

and then comfortingly. They move of their own accord at his feet and let him in, then tumble back into place. They sing to him. And there's no more fog. He can see a tidy little house. Fresh thatch. Smooth stone and solid mortar. No cracks in this place. No grime. No disrepair. And even his ghost is bouncing like a child behind the wolves who carry his body, rushing inside after it. Feels like waking up. Brain isn't numb again. He's in the witch's hut and he knows himself, and he knows her and Fair Sky and the cub and can runrunrun around the morning fire the witch has lit in the center of her hut.

Can realize, finally and with feeling that was not there before:

he died.

--

The witch is sitting on a bench, beside that fire, poking at it with a long stick. Fair Sky and the cub are laying his body down on her table. Fair Sky, face still healing from her own rites in the Underworld, crosses his arms over his chest as though she thinks he'll be more comfortable that way. The cub is unfastening her own cloak, holding it out to midair, unable to see anyone.

"Cover him. He was -- in the Underworld, he was bare."

The witch scoffs. "I doubt he cares," she says. But looks over at the body, all the same, quiet as Fair Sky takes the cub's cloak and lays it over his body. The witch shakes her head. "He has departed his body." She lifts up her stick, looking at the glowing orange tip. Cool air presses against it, fades the ember of the wand, leaves a thin trail of smoke rising upward. She follows that trail with her eyes.

"I do not know where he is. Perhaps he has already gone onward."

Somehow that sounds like a challenge.

--

Watching the smoke, the witch's lips twitch slightly.

That smirk.

primordial wolfman

All in all,

dying and being dead is not how Rafael imagined it.

--

Not sure how he imagined it, really. Quick bloody thing. Flash of agony you barely feel because your adrenaline's going, your blood is going, everything is going and then it's not. Bullets in your heart or claws through your spine or your head coming off your shoulders stops it and that's it. Red, then white, then blackness forevermore. Some wolves talk of Homelands, spirits that reincarnate, and he believes that, sure. But never really thinks of it that way.

Just thinks of death as a final thing. The end. Darkness.

This isn't darkness. This is a strange in-between state. He's dead. He's outside his body. He doesn't see a tunnel of light and things don't fade to black. He's still here, stuck, without a place to go.

Only logical that he looks for his body. What else can he do? He looks. He finds his body. He follows, a very long way, stupidly, like a cub following mother. Only not. Cubs have their whole lives ahead of them. He's just dead.

--

Witch's cabin is the first thing he really recognizes. Even his own body: he hardly recognized that. Was just a lump of meat. Strange that he was so attached to it, felt like it was his, felt like it was him. Strange that he took care of it, bathed it and fed it and groomed it. Got haircuts for it. Shaved it, if infrequently. Thought, secretly and guiltily and only very occasionally, that it was a pretty nice body. Proportions were right and something about the arrangement of the parts was pleasing, he though.

Strange that wounds on it were a big deal to be bandaged and cleaned. Strange that uniting it with another body, preferably the girl's, was such a big deal.

Witch's cabin, though. That stirs something in him. Recognition; relief? Delight maybe. Emotion. And like a domino it tips off another, and another, and then:

there's sudden shock,

there's sudden outrage,

there's sudden and stupid surprise. He didn't think they'd really take his life. What the fuck? He didn't think they would.

Anger, then. He's quite angry, wafting his way across those warding-welcoming stones. Sifting through a wall or maybe through the door like the proper person he no longer was.

--

Three women caring for his body inside. His own memory doesn't care anything for it. The memory of this life sees meaning in it, though. Threes are sacred. Three women is a sacred image. Three women, a cub, a woman in her prime, and a woman that, in this day and age, might as well be a crone: that is most sacred of all.

Makes sense that they're the ones to prepare the body. Which, he realizes now, is his body -- but also the body of whoever he was in this time. Gave more than one life, he thinks, and is more outraged than ever.

--

They arrange his body. Cub's blind now. Wolf feels a little sorry for her. Promised her nothing permanently bad would happen, but that didn't hold, did it? She's permanently blind and he's permanently dead. They fold his arms over his chest and cover him and all the while he paces around the edges of the hut, around and around, seething. Who knew being dead involved so much sound and fury?

"I'm right here," he says aloud, though he doubts anyone can hear him. "I'm right here and I don't even know how to go onward."

the lost ones

Fair Sky and the cub are sitting down. Cub covers her face. She's saying something to the witch, but her words tumble over and tangle with Rafael's. He can hear her; she can't hear him.

Witch tightens up a little, shaking her head. But even as she does, Fair Sky is saying soothingly to the cub: "It will not last. Your eyes will heal. The spirits are bound; they cannot harm those who are not supplicants. You were only lost."

Her hand goes to rest on the cub's shoulder, and the cub accepts it, but she still draws up her knees, rests her head against them in frustration and despair.

Witch isn't looking at them, though. She's stirring embers again with her stick, looking over at Rafael.

The general direction of Rafael.

Lifts that stick again, and blows those tendrils of smoke toward that direction. It's an idle gesture. Idle, except: not. The smoke breaks against the place where he stands, flows around him, and he can see her eyes narrow. He can see her rise from her bench. Sees Fair Sky and the cub glance up at her, but perhaps they only expect strangeness from this one.

The witch comes toward him, holding that stick with its burning tip as though it is a weapon. Moves slowly, deliberately, not in attack. In investigation. Comes within inches of him.

primordial wolfman

Wolf was pacing round and round the little cabin. Move any faster and they'd see him all right: they'd see the vortex of smoke his movement causes.

They start talking about cub's eyes, though. And wolf slows. Listens. He's glad. He's still angry, but he's also glad. Glad she'll see again. Glad to see Fair Sky and the cub speaking as allies, if not quite friends.

See that, he thinks. He planted the seeds of that. So maybe it wasn't all for naught after all.

--

Witch comes at him with a burning stick. Wolf wasn't even watching the smoke break against his not-body, but he looks now. Spirit's more primordial than the body, isn't so sophisticated in its thought, so abstract in its reason. Wolf was hardly sophisticated or abstract in the first place, and like this he's very nearly an animal. Shies from fire. Takes a step back out of instinct, but comes up against the wall.

Could probably go through the wall too. Doesn't, though. His body is here. He has nowhere else to go. That smouldering stick is inches away now, and so --

wolf reaches out. Flicks the very tip of the ember with his finger.

the lost ones

Doesn't burn him. Can't feel anything. Hand goes right through that stick. It doesn't move.

But the witch reacts. She straightens up. She tenses and flexes her arm as though it aches. Which it does: the vibration down the wand, and through her arm, hurting her elbow a little. She doesn't back away though, and he is pinned a bit between the witch, and her wand, and the fire, and the stone and mud at his back. Which does not give, against his being. It, like the white stones ringing her household, recognizes him.

Like she does.

The witch takes a breath. And she whirls away, suddenly, striding across her hut's dirt floor. The Philodox and the Ahroun, whom she barely acknowledges with either respect or fear, look up warily. But there she goes, right over to his body, flicking the cloak away from his chest. Fair Sky bristles, rising to her feet quickly. The witch has her ear to Rafael's cold chest.

Where he stands, he can feel her hair spread over him. Feel her hand on him. Shocking, how ferocious his reaction to sensation. Well: before there was none. None at all.

Her brow furrows. Her eyes close. Her hand creeps up, covers his face, his eyes. If he were breathing, he would be breathing against her palm, but...

"He has been dead for days," she whispers, her eyes opening. She rises, slowly, and he feels her depature. She turns, looking not at the Garou in her hut but at him, against the wall or next to her or wherever he has chosen to stand now. She can't see him, not really, but she can find him. "This body has been dead for... at least three or four days."

"Impossible," says Fair Sky. "He spoke with us not two days ago, before the sixth and seventh nights of the ritual. Stalks in Snow met him on the fifth night."

The witch is frowning at Rafael. "I spoke with him the next morning." Shakes her head. "But the spirit that belongs in this body has not inhabited it for much longer. It is... like looking at a hole in a tapestry. Loose threads." Shakes her head. "I cannot explain it better." Her forehead is so wrinkled. She looks away from him, to Fair Sky and to the cub.

"He spoke to me of another time," she says quietly. "Another place, where he truly came from."

"And I," says Fair Sky, hushed with wariness. One can almost feel the hair on the back of her neck prickling. "He... said he came from a thousand years hence."

The three women are silent for a while. Fair Sky stands there, hands hidden in the sleeves of her robe, looking like she has a mighty itch she needs to scratch somewhere on the middle of her back. But she doesn't dare fidget. She does, eventually, exhale: "Then they are both dead?"

The witch shuts her eyes tightly, reaching up to press her fingers to her brow. She looks like she has a headache: her mind tries to wrap around this.

"I do not think so. Death is bodily. The spirit that once lived in this body departed days ago, but another took its place. And he is merely... separated." She pauses. Hesitates on whether to reveal this, but... neither wolf here has tried to kill her yet. Says: "And he is here. I do not know if he can show himself."

the lost ones

[not SEZ FAIR SKY. SEZ CUB]

primordial wolfman

He has been dead for days.

Through all this,

being flung back in time, inhabiting another's body and another's mind, descending into the underworld, giving his life, all of this,

wolf hasn't felt half so shocked as he does now. His wind leaves him. What fills its place is a sudden thunderbolt of a memory. Some dark night, some unlit trail. A sudden ambush; wyrm-wolves or fomori or perhaps even the Fianna, damn their bones,

quick bloody thing. Flash of agony he barely felt because his adrenaline was going, his blood was going, everything was going and then

it was not.

--

Immense sorrow, then. Howling through the marrow of his bones. Some part of him imagined that when he departed this body for the future, the he that lived in this time would come back to it. He imagined he could leave clues for his past self: who to trust, who to befriend, who to love. He imagined some stupid little life for that past life of his; he and the witch, alone in the mountains, far away from all these noisome people and their wars.

Maybe that's why his sixth gate manifested like that. Maybe that's why he surrendered to it so easily, so trustingly. It came straight from his own mind. His deepest, most secret wishes. Gaia is cruel, and Gaia is kind: she takes and she gives.

His past life will never have that future. Will never meet the witch, will never meet the cub, will never come to trust Fair Sky. Will never live a quiet life in the mountains, in a little cabin like this one, coming home in the night to a warm bed. His past life is already dead.

And so is he.

Almost.

--

Wolf's head snaps up. Wolf thinks of all he has already lost. Wolf thinks of all he stands to lose, if he doesn't get back. Somehow. Back to life, but more specifically: back to his life, a thousand years in the future. Wolf thinks of the promise he made to the girl -- did he make it, or did he just imagine it? -- that he would be back; that he would stay. With her. Be hers. Wolf feels that possibility slipping away, like silk shredding to strands. Grasps for them. Feels the wall solid at his back and suddenly, suddenly has an idea.

Strides to the mantle. The stones that know him. Reaches in with his bare, immaterial hands -- reaches through the fire and the wood, but not the stone. The stones: they know him. He grasps them, even if they burn, even if they sear, and with all his might he wrenches them out of the hearth. Sends them skittering and rolling across the bare dirt floor, knocking wood askew, showering sparks.

Smoke begins to fill the chamber. Wolf steps into the thick of it and stands still, stands very still, allows the smoke to trace his body.

witch

The witch does not strictly have a mantle. Or a fireplace; it's just a pit in the ground. But he goes to that, and reaches in, and pulls at the embers, the stones that line it, and scatters them.

None of the women shriek, but Fair Sky grabs the cub and pulls her close, out of the path of sparks. The witch just stands there, holding that stick -- that wand. Now the Philodox can see what the witch saw, vaguely: the form of a man in the smoke, momentarily, before the morning breeze begins to pull the dashed smoke upward, out through the roof.

The witch scoffs. In another life: well of course you would.

A little bit of a smirk at the corner of her mouth, even in this life.

"You are far from home, spirit," she says. Then lifts the wand, that long stick, and holds it out, the smoking tip pointing straight upward, offering it to him.

He has no idea that the faint glow around it that he sees is invisible to Fair Sky and the cub.

spiritual wolfman

What is he supposed to do with that stick?

Wolf stares at the stick. The wand. Whatever the hell it might be. Stares at the witch, frustrated. "I can't touch it," he tells her, irritated, and swipes his hand at it again.

Just in case something's different. Just in case something's changed.

witch

Hand makes contact with wand.

Philodox and cub see it wobble. Cub's eyes widen but the Adren just looks on, patient.

The witch, looking at where he stands even as the smoke clears, just nods.

spiritual wolfman

Wolf draws a quick breath. Didn't expect that. Startles him almost as much as it startles the cub. More.

He snatches his hand back. Puts it out again after a moment, slower. Cautious. Fingertips against the side of the wood, ever so lightly. Focuses his will, his concentration, what remains of his homeless spirit. Wraps his hand around that stick and gives it a gentle tug.

witch

Feeling motion, feeling a stir, the witch does not patiently wait for the ghost to take the wand. She drops it. Instinct kicks in, he still has that. Memories of a body, even with that body gone. The wand drops and he grabs. It rests in his hand, no more difficult to wield than it would be if he were embodied. As though he were a man, and it were a stick.

The witch cannot see him, but she and the other two can clearly see the slender piece of wood resting in midair, not quite motionlessly but certainly hanging of its own accord, held by nothing.

"I cannot restore this body," the witch says, indicating the medieval knight whose squire, whose cousin, do not yet know that he has fallen. She is bewildered. She does not know why he lingers; maybe he waits for permission. "Why do you stay here? It is not your time. Return to your own."

spiritual wolfman

Now wolf's holding a stick. A stick that glows, and a stick that he supposes has power. Doesn't know how to tap it, though. Is puzzling over this when the witch starts reasoning with him. Tells him to return to his own.

Wolf's irritated again. "Stop trying to exorcise me," he snaps, but of course she can't hear; he might as well talk to air. Has a stick though. Has a stick and a dirt floor.

Letters begin to appear, scrawled into the dirt. It's modern English at first. Gibberish to these people. He scratches it out before he's done with the first word. Tries again, pulling this time on memories not his own, which grow fainter with every moment:

WHAT HAPPENS NOW BETWEEN

and here two glyphs scratched in the dirt: Fianna and Fang.

witch

Even the Adren gasps this time when the stick moves. When it begins to write. Writes words. And the cub can only hear the scratching, blind as she is. She keeps hearing things. Gets frustrated easy.

The witch looks at the words, then at the Adren. Shakes her head. She can't read.

This is when the Philodox rises, unfolding herself. She has no idea where the ghost is, but she goes over, looks at the words, the glyphs, reads slowly. She is educated, but it is not a skill she can practice openly, or often. Letters appear and are scratched out. New ones replace them.

And she reads them aloud for the other women. The witch's eyebrows go up. The Adren looks over at the cub, then takes a breath, straightening her back.

"It is my belief that being struck blind, even though she may heal, is both a fitting and adequate punishment for Ember's misdeeds." She pauses, and frowns. "There may be a call for more, given..."

she glances at the body on the table. Exhales. "I will speak against it. A willing sacrifice to the spirits is a sacred thing. It shall not be tarnished by extracting a price."

She casts about, looking for the stick, guessing at eyeline. Comes very close, so calculated is her attempt. Is almost looking straight at him, though she cannot see him.

"This cub may have been lost forever, or one of her own may have had to give their life, had you not taken this fallen body into the underworld to make the trade," she says, more levelly. "I see that. I do not understand how it came to be. I can only trust in Gaia that it was meant to be so."

The witch, watching them, flicks her eyes downward, then away.

The Philodox tips her head, thoughtful, withdrawn a moment. "Does that bring you peace, spirit?"

spiritual wolfman

Such an ornery, rageful thing, the wolf. Even dead. Or disembodied. First reaction is to get his hackles up again. Starts scratching angry words,

I AM NOT DE

but stops. Scratches them out too, big angry slashes. A pause for a while. Stick hovers, indecisive. Moves again.

SOME.

And below that:

WITCH WILL NOT BE HARMED, an imperative almost, but then the punctuation: ?

Stick leans at an alarming angle, point against the earth, held by some invisible force. Then it moves again:

FAIR SKY AND CUB WILL TALK TO WARCRY? GOOD WOLF. REASONABLE.

witch

Only the Philodox can begin to guess at what he's writing. She doesn't laugh, or ask him to finish, or argue. She merely watches, awed and also unsettled, as the words get taken out again. Replaced again. Somehow she thinks she can sense his rage, but she's not sure. Maybe she only wishes she did.

At the word he writes, the way he refers to the woman who lives alone in this hut, she takes a breath, affronted and disturbed. Takes a step back. Looks at the witch, who is looking at her hands on her lap. Looks at the word again, and does not read them as they are.

She reads 'witch' as 'Fianna kinswoman'. Neither the witch nor the cub have any idea. Of course. But she does not say the word aloud, for whatever reason.

Hearing that this ghost has some peace, but wants to make sure she will not be harmed, the witch glances up again. Looks right at him. Like she can actually see him. She can't, though. Surely she can't. She just guesses so well. Feels him more closely than the others. But then: of course she would.

The Philodox is the one who speaks, though. Quietly: "She will not be harmed by the Silver Fangs. I will see to it. But I believe that Stalks in Snow has forgotten about her. His eye is on Ember." She looks over at the cub. "He wants us to talk to someone called Warcry. I know the name, but not the wolf." Her brow is furrowed. "He is quite insistent that we keep your kinswoman from harm." Truthfully, she sounds affronted by this: a little insulted at his concern for the witch, when her own is so profoundly focused on the blind cub to blame for the almost-failed ritual. The blind cub who watched another wolf die for her sake, and must live with that. She says that Stalks in Snow has forgotten the witch; she has almost forgotten her, too.

But Ember just nods, perhaps too quickly. "Anything." She shrugs, her hair hanging in her face though she doesn't notice it much.

spiritual wolfman

Again the stick rests for a moment, slanted, pensive.

TELL HIS KIN WHAT HAPPENED. And the stick points toward the dead body, the dead wolf. His. Not the wolf's.

Pause is even longer this time. Wolf tries hard to think of something to say. Something else to put to rights. Some final loose end to tie. In the end there's little left. He thinks of the girl, the witch, his witch-girl; but there's nothing these people can do. They were a thousand years dead by the time she was born.

Just a few more words then:

OUR SPIRITS MEET AGAIN.

--

Wolf lays the stick down then. Horizontally, carefully, respectfully. His hand touches it a moment longer. Then he lets go. Stands.

Speaks aloud to whoever or whatever might hear him:

"Okay. I'm ready."

witch

There's a motion of Fair Sky's arm; she reaches to touch him, but she can't. Even if she could, maybe neither of them would feel it. But she means for it to be comfort. She doesn't even need to see where the stick is pointing to know what he means. "Of course," she says. Shakes her head. "You do not need to wonder."

Things go quiet. The stick is still but not perfectly; they can sense him. The witch, seated at the edge of her bed, stares at her hands. She focuses on the wand he holds. She keeps it half here and half... somewhere else. Somewhere he can touch. Somewhere he can feel it, so that he can speak when no one can hear him.

Then the edge of it moves again. He writes four more words.

Fair Sky looks at them, and looks around, and does not know who he means. She does not know that he means all three of them. She just gives the faintest smile, aching. But the stick lays itself down. The witch looks up. She cannot see him, can only sense him, and knows he has not gone.

But when Fair Sky helps Ember stand, they ask, and she tells them a lie:

He has gone.

Tells them rather soft lies: they seem to come easily to her, but they don't. She just wants them to go. She doesn't want this Silver Fang adren staring at her. She doesn't want this blind cub in front of her. They both promise her the things they'll do to keep her safe, but it isn't for her. They do it because he died. They do it because his spirit traveled a thousand years, somehow, and for some reason, to fill a body that was already empty, and now there won't be a war between the tribes and now Ember won't be hunted and harried til her feet are bloody stumps for pulling a stupid prank. They do it for him.

But she has to live with that debt. Looks at the cub as they leave, carrying his covered body the same way they came. They are going to bury him, sing over him, and she knows that. The cub knows what it's like to have someone die for you, but at least the cub understands the why of it. Makes sense: protect a youngling, keep the tribes from warring, save her from a dark eternity in the underworld. For the cub, this is only the beginning of a deeply ingrained nobility, a profound sense of the meaning of honor.

For the adren, this is a new perspective on a vengeful theurge in their midst. One who readily would have hunted a kinswoman to death, one who just as easily turned on a cub. She will be watching him. And one day, she may be the one to pronounce his punishment, or expose his madness. His sin. She has lost a tribesman, but only one who was already gone. She has seen something she cannot fathom, and her faith in Gaia has only grown because of it. She can only trust. She can only believe that war between their own kind is evil, that a cub's mistake can then lead her to a higher calling, that a woman who may truck with demons can also allow the dead to speak from beyond the grave.

They leave with honor, and faith, and his past life's cooling body.

And when they are gone, he is still there. He does not follow the body that is not his. That tie is severed. He could, if he liked. Walk after it, watch them bury him, sing over him. Follow Ember and Fair Sky as they speak to both tribes, watch Stalks in Snow argue with them, listen as he is rebuked. Perhaps he heads that way.

But if he lingers, he sees the witch closing the door. Picking up a broom. She begins to sweep, tidying up the disturbed dirt of her floor, the ashes, the rest. She pretends for a while that she does not notice him, but it doesn't last.

"I do not know how to send you back," she says, eventually.

spiritual wolfman

Expected to just be gone, really. Expected to close his eyes and dissipate. Feel his consciousness scatter and wink out. Maybe he'll open his eyes back in his own time. Maybe he'll find himself back in that mythological Homeland. Maybe that'll just be it; this is the very last iteration of his spirit, and from here on out nothing but oblivion.

None of that happens. He lays the stick down and he accepts what fate might bring him, but fate brings him nothing at all. He can still see and hear the hut, its occupants. He can still watch as they bear his body -- the body of his past incarnation -- away.

Strange, to look at himself like that. He looks so like the face he knows, and so unlike. The scars are all different. The lines on his face, carved by a different time, a different life, different cares and different sorrows, are all different. Over now, at any rate. They bear his body away and the door closes. The wolf doesn't follow.

The wolf waits. No oblivion comes for him. No shining gateway back Home. No sudden blink to the future, either. Just a witch tidying up her small, clean home.

After a while wolf sits down. There are only a few surfaces; almost without realizing it he chooses the bed. Saw this bed not so long ago, and a different woman lay in it; not the witch, not the girl, but some amalgamation of both. Some imaginary mate to his soul. He puts his face in his hands, scrubs. No one can see him, but he is still too proud to weep.

Lifts his head when witch speaks. His smile is wan. She can't see that either. He reaches for the stick again -- but she can't read.

"Can you see me? Hear me?"

witch

She pauses, sweeping, and closes her eyes.

"I can... feel you."

spiritual wolfman

Wolf doesn't have a beating heart anymore, but something skips a beat in his chest. He sits up, suddenly alert.

"How?"

witch

A small exhale, not quite a laugh. She isn't sweeping anymore. Leans on the broom, turning slightly, searching for him. Stops, looking at her bed.

"I do," she says, which isn't an answer, but a response to his startlement, his alertness, his questioning. She thinks he doubts. Why not? She does. But she does feel him. Senses him. And says to him, very quietly: "If you had not come -- if the wolf whose body you took had simply died days ago, and gone to the ground -- then the one they call Stalks in Snow would have come for me that morning."

Her shoulders have rounded down. "No one would start a war over that. The Fianna would have found their cub, some way or another. The rites would have gone on. And that would have been the end of it."

No war, no cub to save, none of it. It all reduces to that first thing prevented: Stalks in Snow slaughtering her while she made her porridge.

"Why?"

spiritual wolfman

She can't hear him after all. She can feel him. Sense him on some level; discern certain emotions, guess at thoughts. That's all, and yet: it is enough.

Wolf takes a breath. Wolf goes through the motions of taking a breath, anyway. His spirit remembers having a body. His mind interprets everything through that corporeal lens. Supposes he could take on any form, do just about anything he wills -- but his own will binds him. He doesn't know any other way except this. This body, these words, this way of existing and communicating.

"Love you," he says, roughly. "Or ... I love the reborn you that lives a thousand years from now. And my spirit loves yours. Not gonna let some racist bastard kill you."

Wolf looks around the hut. Back to her. Adds, "Saw a mirage of you in the Underworld. We lived together here.

"It was nice."

witch

A ripple goes through the air, across the floor. Dust moves, and fire flickers. Her hair shifts, as though blown by an invisible wind. She cannot make out exact words. She can sense the current of them. Strange: she understands less. She understands more. No words get in the way of meaning.

Love. Protection. Home.

Her brow furrows.

"Mate?" she asks, quietly.

spiritual wolfman

Big jump, girlfriend to mate. Wolf shifts a little where he sits; reflexive discomfort. Wants to say is what it is, but even he recognizes the futility, the stupidity.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess. Unofficial."

Couple beats.

"What about you? No mate this go-around?"

witch

Such a strong pulse, before. Ambivalent now. Shifting. She leans her broom against a wall and comes closer, walking towards the bed. Does not sit; isn't sure where he is. But stands closer, feeling a flicker of questioning, of curiosity, of a few things she doesn't understand.

He knows the answer to his own question. There is no one who protects her, wolf or kin or mortal. She has herbs and a goat. She lives alone, well into her thirties. No. She has no mate. Perhaps she never has; if she did, she might have children to show for it. Does not speak of a mate, either, if the word that came to her mind stirred any memories. She just knows what it means. Love. Protection. Home. A life together.

She's seen it, at least. Or feels it, like she feels him, somewhere deep inside and inexplicable, unnameable.

Puts her hand out, palm toward him. "I would not have called to you, even had I known that I needed you. But I am glad you came."

spiritual wolfman

Wolf takes her hand. Tries anyway. Nothing there to hold, except -- god, if he tries, if he focuses so very hard, he can almost convince himself --

he takes her hand. He presses it to his brow, or he would if he could. Takes a breath; lets it go shuddering.

"Wish that other me was still alive," he says. "Would've stayed with you. Would've made the others tell him about you and I, a thousand years from now. Would've stayed with you."

witch

Regret flows through her from the tips of her fingers, the palm of her hand. It feels warm. She remembers: he is alive. Tried to explain it, but the cub and the adren couldn't fathom it. The spirit in her room is a living spirit, connected to a living body that is just very, very far away. Of course he would feel warm.

She feels nothing but that warmth, and follows it. He can feel her, albeit dimly, and awkwardly. A caress across his brow, his crown. It's the first gentleness she's shown him, other than feeding him once.

It takes her a moment to realize that the regret she feels is not her own, but another answer from him. She just shakes her head. "The world is as it is," she says softly. "I am as I am."

It is what it is.

"Thank you," she whispers. "I do not know how you knew or how you came. But thank you."

spiritual wolfman

Makes him uncomfortable to be thanked like this. Doesn't she know she needn't thank him? That he doesn't want her gratitude? Just wants her to be alive. Just wants her to be safe, and protected, and alive.

Cub promised she would watch over her. Philodox did too, but it's the cub's word he puts his trust in. Philodox'll do it because it's right and true and honorable. Cub'll do it because of a debt she'll never be able to repay. It's a cold, remorseless, mercenary way to think of it, but wolf has nothing else to hold to. In this life, he's already dead.

"Don't thank me," he says, low and raw. "Just be careful."

witch

"Thank you," she says,

anyway,

contrarian.

spiritual wolfman

Wolf lets a little laugh out. Of course she's contrary. He lifts his head. Looks at her face. Same and yet different; different lines, different scars.

"You're welcome," he says, "and thank you. For knowing I'm here."

Wolf stands, then Takes yet another breath he doesn't need. Deep one, filling nonexistent lungs, raising nonexistent shoulders. Releases it.

"I should go. I should ... try to find my way back."

witch

The warmth against her hand shifts. Rises. She breathes in, steps back, feeling him stand even though she cannot see him. She feels a sharp pang of loneliness: better to have a spirit she can almost communicate with and sort of feel than nothing at all, right?

No one ever touches her.

Sometimes she goes days without being spoken to.

But there's also this: she was so eager for the wolves to leave. And she has no desire to be the mate of a Silver Fang's spirit, separated from his body, fading who knows when while she stands helplessly by.

--

Takes a second breath, deeper. "You are leaving," she says, though they both know this is the truth. She refuses to show loneliness, or sorrow. She just nods. Says: "Take one of the white stones outside. It will protect you."

She hopes.

spiritual wolfman

She's not the only one that can sense things. Wolf's not the most astute creature, but loneliness is such a pervasive, primal emotion. It's one that wolves know better than most. Why else would they band together so?

Impulse: he steps forward. Wraps his immaterial arms around her. Squeezes her close, close, even if he can hardly feel her at all.

Doesn't bother speaking now. He's said all he wanted to, and can. Nothing left now except this: love, albeit displaced in time and space. And a farewell.

--

Wolf doesn't look back, walking out. It would break what remains of his heart. He sets his feet firmly. Reminds himself it's all said and done. This is a thousand years gone. They meet again, and perhaps again and again: immortal spirits in mortal shells.

He gathers a stone from the ground. It seems warm, and he keeps it close, clutched in his palm, as he walks straight away from the witch's hut; into the unknown.

witch

Wraps her in warmth for a moment. That's all it is. It isn't touch. It isn't a mate. Or a husband. It isn't even a friend; it's just a moment where he feels was warm as the spring that is now promised to all of them. She remains still in the center of it. She feels a pulse. He is still speaking, though neither of them say a word. And she hears him still,

and knows when he is gone.

--

Outside there is a white stone the size of her fist that feels warm to his palm. That is the one he picks up, the one he is drawn to, and the one he carries with him. The sun is risen but he cannot feel it and its brightness does not sting his eyes. The grass looks lush and wet but not to his feet. He goes up towards the woods, the very same ones he came from before, when he first met her.

This version of her.

The trees are thick enough that it is dark when he walks into them.

--

He passes shadows, hears words: hears the voice of Fair Sky arguing for the blinded cub. He hears the blinded cub later, hours later, speaking quietly to Warcry about the cailleach living in that village, about keeping her safe. He cannot hear whole conversations, resolutions.

He is moving very quickly now, in the dark. Begins to smell trees and grass again, begins to feel moisture in the air and things like heat and cold. And before sight, before hearing, he feels his arms around a slender, warm little body. Warmer than his, as though he's been out in the cold. They're on a narrow, narrow bed in a small room where a Guardian watches over them -- resting in hispo beside the door. But they're under a blanket, and she's asleep, and theyr'e together.

spiritual wolfman

Been so long since he's felt anything that it's almost too much. That first shocking electric tingle of sensation: scent and sound, sight and touch. Wolf has to stop, has to catch his breath. Regain his composure. Almost winces away sometimes, overstimulated, every nerve reawakening, raw.

Coming back to the world. Coming back to life. Reborn into his own body, raw and naked and fragile all over again.

Somewhere along the way he's not longer walking. Somewhere along the way he feels the smoothness of the sheets, the softness of the bed. The weight of the blanket and -- thank you, he thinks, without knowing who it is he means to thank, thank you, thank you, thank you -- the familiarity of that body, that warmth, the slender back against his chest.

His arms wrap tight around the girl. He buries his face in the nape of her neck; inhales that scentlessness that has come to define her as much as a scent defines anyone else. For a while he's overcome, has no words. Found her again, across a thousand years, across a lonely lifetime or a hundred where they never, ever found each other, died without knowing each other.

Could've died without finding her again. Could've passed out of existence, lost in the darkness. Left nothing but a body, a cruel reminder of what was and could have been. Didn't. Found his way back by the grace of gaia.

Thank you, he thinks. Thank you.

a cub, a sacrifice.

gatekeepers

Thoughtlessly she rolls over, shifting aside to make room for him. Her back is warm when he puts his chest to it. She's warm. Smells of nothingness. The fire snaps and chews behind him, giving off a dull warmth that touches his bare shoulders after he slides under her blankets.

It comes easily this time. Came without thinking, even. So many would have walked through the door, felt themselves pulled to disrobe and make themselves at home, and been wary. Resisted. Plenty would have absolutely been afraid of the temptation to disrobe, to lay down their sword.

For Rafael, who has been frustrated and even angered by every single gate he has come through thus far, finds the way through this one without even thinking about it. Finds the pleasure of this warmth, this home, this peace, and does not feel ashamed to let himself have it. No embarrassment stops him from taking off his clothes, or laying down his sword. No writhing sense of unworthiness or distrust.

Just what he has now: a few moments to simply rest, and enjoy this.

He falls asleep.

It's that simple.

--

But it's the cold that wakes him. Fire's gone out. It's pitch dark now. Feels no one in his arms, and nothing beneath him but flat, hard stone. Cold enough to make him shiver. No clothes. No sword. He knows he's wearing his signet ring, but can't feel it. Certainly can't see it in the dark.

primordial wolfman

Last thing he feels, going to sleep, is contentment. Safety and warmth; the thoughtless comfort of sleeping somewhere where he is loved.

--

First thing he feels, waking, is disappointment. Girl's gone. Bed's gone, fire's gone, hut is gone. Dark and cold now. Puts his hand out and finds cold stone. No warmth of another body close by.

Doesn't even have his clothes. Or his weapon. But that's okay, because he has fur and he is a weapon. Wolf pushes up, shifts in the same moment. Thickfurred, heavy-jawed, a direwolf now. He sniffs in the darkness. Seeks his next gate.

gatekeepers

A voice, not far:

"Is someone there?"

Young. Female. Flinching.

primordial wolfman

[SNIFF! gud nose -2diff!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 3 )

gatekeepers

[OMG DER A FIANNA CUB OBBAR DER]

primordial wolfman

Wolf's ears spring upright. He replies at once: a low gruff bark, unechoing in the dark. An answer, a greeting; not a hint of threat.

Then he starts sniffing. Puts his nose to the ground, follows a trail of scent. Pads forward, claws ticking on stone.

gatekeepers

No answer. But motion, sound. The voice comes again, snarling now, on the verge of rage:

"Who are you?!"

primordial wolfman

Four legs swift on stone. Nose keen, senses attuned. He closes in quickly. Intimidating in the dark, perhaps: a wall of rage, an impression of great size, great speed.

"Friend," he whuffs. "Come to find you. Bring you home."

gatekeepers

There's no rage left in her now, but the capacity for it is... palpable. As he gets closer to the scent he can sense it as clearly as the tribal wildness in her blood. Only a cub for now, but as years come on, as she learns to hone her strength, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Is, already.

"I got so lost," she says, gasping the words, shuddering them out. It's so cold here. He can hear the sound of wind; no walls or ceiling protect them. Just this stone beneath them, the icy breeze, the endless dark. "I got so lost," she repeats. "Who are you? What is your name?"

primordial wolf

Truth is wolf's surprised she even got this far. To the seventh gate. Wonders how she passed the others, or if she even passed the others. Perhaps she took some sideroute. Some backdoor shortcut, got so lost. Got so lost.

Wolf closes in. Soon he's there, right there, loping to a trot to a stop. Lowers his head and bumps his muzzle, the broad top of his head against the cub. Rough, physical contact, as though to drive in his realness here in this unreal world.

"Hollow-Cold-Pale Sunrise," he answers, which is the closest approximation in this literal tongue. "Son of Falcon. Here to find you." It's deliberate, this repetition. "Bring you home."

lost ones

The cub shudders at the touch, but it doesn't feel like revulsion. Who knows how long the last day or so has felt to her? In this darkness, alone, every moment might feel interminable.

"Do you know the way out?" she asks. Her breath smells like terror. Her hands are on his face, searching him blindly, stroking his ears and crown, confirming that yes, this is a wolf, this is a creature she can understand.

primordial wolf

Rough fur. Wet nose. Hot breath. Soft, furry ears. Whiskers and an upper lip that pushes back to reveal long teeth. Yes: a wolf. A big, prehistoric wolf, and one of a different tribe, but perhaps in this world it matters less. It matters little.

"No." Wolf does not mince words, does not lie. "But we find together. There will be a spirit. A gate-watcher. Spirit will ask us to give up something. Maybe hard to do. But we will do. Together."

Gives the cub another bump, top of his heart squarely against the center of her chest. Pushes her back a little. Then his teeth gentle on the nape of her neck, pulling her up to her feet as though she were a literal cub.

"Come. We move."

lost ones

He can hear her, feel her, taking in a breath. Deep. It infuses her. The air is cold, so cold, just like her hands, but she takes strength from it now instead of being made brittle by it. Those hands stay on him. He feels a bit of pressure as she uses him for leverage; hands on his shoulders, his back. Pushes herself to standing.

Her hand stays in his fur, fingers tangled in the thick of it. Holds tightly, but not so tight that he feels even a brush of discomfort.

"This is a dead place," she tells him. "I have seen no spirits. Heard no voices. Nothing has been asked of me."

primordial wolf

"Then maybe we not in right place. So we move." And so he does: starts walking, shoulderblades rising and falling beneath his thick pelt. "You stay close. No let go until we somewhere else."

lost ones

She huffs a little breath. "I have walked, and run, until my legs turned cold. There is nothing here."

All the same, bristling as she does under authority, her hand tightens in his fur. Stay close. Don't let go.

He knows she won't.

--

They walk for a long time. Perhaps forever. Unless he counts each step and each heartbeat, he has no way to feel the passage of time. He runs into no walls. Wind comes from everywhere, nowhere. There is no light. If not for the occasional throat-clearing or intake of breath and the tightness of a hand in his fur, he might forget that he is not alone. Sometimes her footsteps seem only the echo of his own.

"Why did you come for me?" she asks, after all that time. He's answered this question so many times now. But she doesn't know. She got lost. And no one knew where to find her. She knew that.

Knew she might die here. Or was already dead.

primordial wolf

They walk. And walk. And walk.

And eventually, walking, wolf shifts. Grows from his near-wolf shape to his monstrous shape, and from there, descends into his near-man shape. Remains there, either for utility or for some modicum of modesty -- naked in the cold and the dark, after all. With no fur to hold to, he and the cub hold hands instead, grips strong with something akin to desperation.

Time loses meaning. Space. They walk, but there's no indication they go anywhere. They wait, but there's no indication time passes at all.

Then she speaks. He's grateful for it: puts some meaning to the passage of time, space. Wolf turns his head to the sound. Slows his pace just a little. Hardly seems to matter if they run or crawl, anyway.

"Long story," he says. Been in the underworld so long he hardly remembers that ancestral life; its words, its ways. "Tell you from the beginning if you promise to believe me."

lost ones

When he shifts, they do not stop walking. But he can hear her breath change, her fear: that he is a mirage. A test. A punishment. Not so. He shifts, and his hand finds hers, and she holds as tightly as she did to his fur. He would be larger than her in his human shape. With her in homid and he in glabro, her hand feels like a small child's and not a young woman's.

"Whatever an oath is worth in this place, you have mine," she says.

primordial wolf

Huff of laughter answers that, as though perhaps wolf doubts anything is worth much at all in this place. Nonetheless he speaks:

"Not from here. Not this place, not even this time. Live a thousand years in the future, across the western sea in a land the Fianna and the Fangs haven't even discovered yet.

"Where I come from, I know a girl. Maybe around your age. Maybe a little older. She's a Fianna too. But kin, not a wolf like you. We're... we belong to each other. Man and woman, wolf and kin.

"Probably sounds insane to you. But things are different where I'm from. There's a war going on, a bad one against the Wyrm. Compared to that, all the rest of the shit you guys fight about now, tribes and claims and all, don't even matter.

"Anyway. I got sent back from that time. Think I'm living a past life now. Don't know why, don't know how. But that girl... she's here too. Sort of. Her past life maybe. The witch in your village. Older than the girl I know and more powerful, but I think it's her spirit in there. Or at least close enough that I wanna protect her.

"When you messed up the Rite for Stalks in Snow, he thought it was witchcraft. Wanted to blame her. Couldn't let him do that, so I told him I'd go investigate. Put myself between him and her, see? Went to talk to the witch. Told her I wanted peace between the tribes. Told her I didn't want to see anyone dead over this crap. Not her, not my tribesmen, not her tribesmen. Not even the one that raised all this hell. So she told me where your people were, and I found them, told them you can't just fuck up a sacred rite and expect everything to be okay. Told your Alpha the same thing, and she told me it was you. That you played a dumb prank on Stalks in Snow and ended up stuck in the Underworld because of it.

"So I told her I'd go get you, to show the Fianna that a Fang was willing to put his own neck on the line for one of yours. And I told her if I got you, she's gotta be willing to punish you for being a dumb little shit, to show the Fangs that the Fianna aren't going to just sit and laugh when one of theirs screws up the Rite of Reawakening.

"She agreed. And then I went back to my elders, and they agreed too. So here I am. To find you and bring you back, so the tribes don't go to war, so the witch doesn't end up dead over a stupid little trick."

Wolf slows a little. Turns to the cub, though he can't see a damn thing. "You're going to have to face the music when you get back. You know that, right? Won't let them kill you or do anything permanently bad. But you do something so dumb, you gotta take your licks like a grownup."

lost ones

The phrase take your licks means nothing to her. Grownup isn't a term she's ever heard. Dumb means mute. Face the music is a mystery. But these things are nothing, comparatively. He talks of the western sea, which she has only seen once in her life and then only as a little girl. She remembers not being able to tell the difference between sky and sea, and what awe and terror that filled her with. She remembers the salty smell of her father's cloak as she buried her face there, hiding from the inexplicable and the powerful. Doesn't know how old she was then, or why they were at the sea.

Cannot imagine a thousand years. Does not know what this world was like a thousand years in the past and could not, by any stretch, imagine a thousand years hence. Or a hundred. Or fifty. She can only barely imagine one year forward. What he says does sound insane, and overwhelming. She holds his hand and he can feel a tremor go through it.

He's a Silver Fang who is mated to a Fianna kin. It's not like this is unheard of. They leave their tribes and their homes and live as paramours and mistresses, but they're never legitimized or acknoweldged openly. They're never married to the Fangs who take them. It's a shameful thing, and a bitter source of fury to her people. Her hand leaves his when he speaks of this woman that belongs to him. Desperate as she is to not be alone here, she no longer thinks so highly of her lone companion. He's one of those, who will fill the belly of one of her kinswomen with bastards while another woman, a proper Fang woman, receives his name and protection.

Doesn't interrupt, though. Listens as they walk, and walk, about her raising hell and fucking up a sacred rite and Stalks in Snow and dumb little shit. Can't feel her hand anymore. Can only hear her breathing to know that she's still there. And when he speaks to her, asks her if she understands that she'll have to be punished.

Hears her take in a breath, as though to speak, but then white light erupts, filling the place so suddenly and so entirely that they are both momentarily blinded. Everything is white. It burns. Beside him the Fianna cub screams and throws her arms up to shield her face, buckling over. His pupils, blown wide open in their search for light, are in so much pain he can feel them throbbing.

Beneath them is still stone. But as their eyes quickly try to recover, he can make out distant pillars to either side, pillars they never ran into. They are in a great hall, a hundred -- a thousand -- times more vast than any throne room he can imagine. The ceilings are lit by that white light, but so far overhead he could fly and perhaps still not touch them. The walls are miles away, but even they are illuminated. And the light emanates from a dais ahead, and a throne that sits upon it. There is a figure there, but to look at it is more piercing than the sun. Male, female -- impossible to say. But pure.

And as he begins to blink away the tears that rushed to his eyes to soothe them, he can finally see the cub beside him. Who is lithe and strong and clothed simply, not unlike the witch or the Fianna pack he met. Dressed more like a boy, though her hair is very long, and a deep, livid red. Her eyes are bright blue.

He recognizes her, though she's younger than the Fianna he knows in his own time by a couple of years. He know her as Firebrand.

primordial wolf

He knew.

Somehow he knew. Or suspected. Or thought maybe, maybe...

And now he knows. It's not some random cub, it's not some wolf he's never met. It's Firebrand. An earlier, smaller version -- a thousand years dead now, yes, but in the here and now: alive. Lost. Found.

Wolf's eyes are stinging. Wolf's head pounds with a sudden, receding headache. Wolf has no time to say anything -- what would he say, anyway? -- before he turns. Turns to the figure on the throne. Steps subtly but unmistakably between the throne and the cub.

Speaks to the cub without taking his eyes from the figure, the blazing creature, the final gatekeeper:

"Come on. Time for us to be tested."

lost ones

Steps between Judgement and the cub, but the cub notices. And steps up right next to him again. Stands as straight and tall and proud as she can, chin lifted, even though she can't look straight at the throne. Neither can he. They have to close their eyes. Hell, eventually even the proud little cub lowers her chin, looking at the floor because her eyes are watering again.

Before they can step foward, a voice booms through the space, so loud that it rings in their ears, resonates through the endless chamber:

WHAT DO YOU HAVE LEFT TO GIVE

primordial wolf

Voice like thunder booms across that impossibly huge chamber. Vibrates through his bones. Shakes the fragile meshwork of his lungs. Wolf grits his teeth against it, narrows his eyes like he's moving against stiff wind. When at last silence falls again he draws himself straighter. Shouts back:

"My thoughts. My memories. My strength. My life. What do you want?"

the lost ones

Silence, for a time, unless light itself can be heard. Somehow even in the silence there is still an assault on every sense. The cub, true to her youth, shrinks slightly behind Rafael as though the light pains her. Judgement pervades this place, trembling in her bones. Neither of them are bad, wrong, or wicked. Neither of them have done anything they deserve to be broken for.

But here they are.

YOUR LIFE

The cub who is not Morgan, not Firebrand, but some version of her, some long-dead ghost of her soul, looks at him then, in shock. "No," she says.

primordial wolfman

Wolf half-turns, enough to see cub out of the corner of his eye. "My call," he says, "not yours."

And turning back, seems to steel himself. Thinks, fleetingly and in a flash, of the witch, the girl, his squire, the Philodox, the Fianna as she is in his time, and not in this one. People who are close to him, or more accurately: people who may, given time, have become close to him. Meant something. Wolf's life is so isolated, an island in truth. Hardly any attachments. Few accomplishments of worth. Just a long history of blood in backalley brawls. Almost makes him wonder why it would be worth anything at all to these beings of unfettered light, these celestial gatekeepers.

"All right," he says, and rolls his shoulders back, straightens up tall. "But I want to know that the cub and the witch get through this alive and well. And I want to know my girl back home is going to be okay too."

the lost ones

Firm but cold hand grabs his forearm. "No," she says, fiercely, on edge, all teeth. "This is mad. There should be another way."

Falters, on that last bit. Should be another way. Not the same as knowing that there is one.

But this gatekeeper does not care for the cub's anxiety. Nor for his.

YOUR LIFE

This time, oddly, it almost sounds like a question. A confirmation.

primordial wolfman

First instinct is to shake the cub off. Bare his teeth, raise his hackles, snap.

Wolf bites it back. That first whiplash of motion is there, but -- he checks it, subsumes it. Twists his arm around to grasp cub's forearm in return, a clasp.

"My life," he says. "You asked what I had to give, and I answered."