M
Melody rolled from the bed, the sheets sticking in tacky resistance to her skin. The room was dark but for the sliver of distant candle light in the hall leaving a streak of orange beneath the door. It was so deep into the night that morning was considering making an appearance, as soon as it could get its shit together. Melody felt much the same, her head groggy with the remains of the previous several hours activity. It would be a full moon by tomorrow evening, though, and she had best get started travelling.
Ronan continued to sleep, twisted in the sheets and presumably looking peaceful. Melody felt her hand along the pillows until her fingers struck his tangled hair, then leaned over to kiss his cheek. Sharess had been properly thanked for sending her servant, Hedia, to save her and Yaervan from the frozen pain of the Nars Pass the week before. She liked to think that Sharess had acted on Sune's request in response to Melody fervent, desperate prayers. Melody liked Sharessites as a rule, though she personally found the philosophy shallow. Still, her sisters in pleasure were generally good people, and so she'd promised to give Sharess a proper ritual of gratitude for Her graciousness. Ronan had agreed to it.
Melody would make it up to him someday soon. He had let her use him, but that didn't make it feel settled in her skin and bones, where love tingled in the afterglow of her passion plays. A friend deserved more than safety-words and dents in the headboard. She'd considered asking Ludo - sweet, wonderful, playful Ludo - but her relationship with the aspiring Gondar wouldn't allow it. Ludo had given her a ring; Ronan's heart was safely out of her hands.
But…no, it didn't settle well.
Melody gathered her clothing and tip-toed from the room, using the key to unlock it, then pushing the key under the door once she'd closed it from the outside. She dressed in the hall, then slipped out into Peltarch and the cool, crisp night. She passed the guard, the lamps, the closed storefronts and empty common areas without looking twice, and southward she moved into the snow and wind and uncertain dangers of the Nars Pass. Hobgoblins were slain or avoided - usually the latter - and she entered the territories of Norwick without any difficulty from the border guards. They didn't know her, and she offered them a gift of meat and a few coin in gratitude for their devotion to duty, even through the lonely night and freezing emptiness on Sam's Hill.
She avoided Norwick, of course. She'd not press the Chancellor's grace so offensively - at least, not alone or not in disguise. That little adventure had been hilariously fun, but Ludo's helmet had ruined a patch of her hair, leaving some of the wild curls torn short on the top of her head. So, with only herself, by herself, Melody left the road and headed out into the valley north and east of the barbarian village where Yaervan had shown her the wild grassy expanses overlooking the pocketed forest and she had seen that it was good.
The stars stretched their speckled array from horizon to horizon, unobstructed by cloud nor faded by the light of a city. Her breath puffed in steam vents that quickly became invisible, crystalized instantly in the cold. She could feel every exposed hair, every nervous fiber in her fingers and could feel the gentle chill of frost deep in her lungs with each breath. No person threatened her territory, here. No track nor evidence of regular traffic marred the untamed vista. No building, no livestock, no large game or monster promising some impending hunter or adventurer. Here, in the valley, she was utterly alone.
It was perfect.
In the hours before dawn, Melody scouted out a suitable place where she could Change, burying her things below a hillock tree near the ancient, invisible riverbed in the valley depths. The sloping foothils of the valley walls encircled her, promising shelter from the blistering colds. The canopy above would give shelter from snow or rain. So Melody stripped naked, letting her skin acclimate to the cold as her hair tightened and her nipples hardened and her callouses contracted in response. It felt nice, once one quieted the brain's screaming insistance that clothes were necessary. Human lies for human lives.
Time to be a wolf. This time, she would welcome it.
It started just as she knew it would, when it would. The moon rose to a low apex in the whisp-blue sky, a ghost of perfect spherical wholeness. So must Melody be, it said. So must your spirit be and your body be and your mind be. Whole. Full. Complete. Bright. Unashamed.
The itching became a burning, but what of it? Burn. Burn like fire. Let the flame of this pain fill to every curve and corner of your body. Burn in your passions and burn in your life, burn with pleasure and burn with pain and let yourself know no difference between them. To live is to experience! To love is to embrace! To worship Sune, truly, was to love oneself first and all else would...
...flow from...this...
...ohholymother it hurts it hurts it hhuuUUUURRRTSSS!
justletitendquicklypleasepleasepleaseletitendquickleeeeeEEEEEE
!!!!!!!!!
.
A howl rises up from the trees of the Norwick valley.
