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 wolfmanAll 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 onesFair 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 wolfmanWolf 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 onesDoesn'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 wolfmanHe 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.
witchThe 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 wolfmanWhat 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.
witchHand 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 wolfmanWolf 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.
witchFeeling 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 wolfmanNow 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.
witchEven 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 wolfmanSuch 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.
witchOnly 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 wolfmanAgain 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."
witchThere'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 wolfmanExpected 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?"
witchShe pauses, sweeping, and closes her eyes.
"I can... feel you."
spiritual wolfmanWolf doesn't have a beating heart anymore, but something skips a beat in his chest. He sits up, suddenly alert.
"How?"
witchA 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 wolfmanShe 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."
witchA 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 wolfmanBig 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?"
witchSuch 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 wolfmanWolf 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."
witchRegret 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 wolfmanMakes 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 wolfmanWolf 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."
witchThe 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 wolfmanShe'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.
witchWraps 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 wolfmanBeen 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.
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