Split Heirs
-
He'd always called it "The Beast." It was always there - in her eyes, her teeth, her thick nails, the ever-present lust for wild freedom - but it rarely took control. Her father had taught his children so that, when the time came, they would be ready. They would know how to accept recognize the Change and allow it to fulfill its promises without losing their humanity.
Melody had tried. Her first Change had come nearly three years after her mother had died ("Bless you, Sune, that she never had to see me this way..") and almost a full year after her twin brother had already begun his Changes. He'd teased her, of course. Vedick, son of Stephen Jilles, heir to the Jilles estates and minor border barony. Handsome and full of songs and a wild passion for any ripe, young female that crossed his path. Melody, tempered by her training in the templer of her mother, would watch him leave on the last night of moon waxing, feeling the empathetic anticipation of Vedick's joy. The first time he'd come home after the full eye of Selune had forced him to succumb to the Beast, he'd vomited on Melody's shoes. But every time after that, he'd run into the forest with his chest full of music, his howls echoing through the trees. When it came her turn, at last, to fulfill the curse of her father, Melody had not been alone. Vedick was there at her side, his black fur making him all but invisible. His green eyes watching in impatience as she'd screamed and screamed and screamed…
The Beast was not sympathetic.
No, there was no controlling The Beast; there was only a bargain, a balance of interests to be struck. She could be human for most of her life, stuck in the to-and-fro confusion o human complications and human concerns. Her life would belong to herself first, to Sune secondly and to her duties third. But...
...but...
For two days a month, The Beast was all that she would know, her human life forgotten, irrelevant, complicated and strange. Two days a month, when Selune was at her fullest, brightly proclaiming Her dominance of the night, offering respite and guidance to travelers and the lost, She called to the children of the wolf to howl their praises, to run and prowl and defy the world in vibrant, singing vitality. Two days of the month, and Melody Jilles would vanish almost utterly, leaving behind the legacy of a curse to hunt and chase the moon.
The Hunt had gone so well! Melody ran fast and hard, impatient as always and nearly paying the price for it. But her new pack had kept her safe, and she's gloried in the freedom and the scent of blood in the air. Goblin blood, mostly, though some of it was that of her new, wonderful friends. There was fresh deer meat, and Rhistin - her mentor - had praised her arrows as they flew into the hearts of the grotesque forest vermin.
She'd forgotten what the day was. The itching beneath her flesh had gone unheeded, lost to the clamber of voices and thrilling chases. She'd died and met Celandur (a recent, strange friend) on the other side, in a place of heat and emptiness and loss. She'd made a new deal with Sune. She'd been brought back into the arms of the beautiful, strange immortal who sang every moment of her sad, strange life. There'd been tenderness, forgiveness and joy. She'd offered herself to Ludo in a partnership for a brief celebration of life, taken through pleasure and hot blood and release. Then the hunt... the deer... the goblins...and him…
Melody forgave herself for forgetting, but it was too late to think more on it. It was time. It had been building, as as she looked at Ludo, awaiting him for their rendezvous with carnal enjoyment, the moon rose above the tundra horizon.
The group was suddenly awash in silver shine, and the Moon Elf, probably feeling its gaze, looked up. Keira. She was the first, but seconds afterward, Melody felt the oncoming Change. The Beast howled and screamed at the cage bars of her humanity, ripping upward out of her as a demon emerging from the body of a virgin sacrifice. It began in her fingers and arms, but moved swiftly to her face. If she didn't hurry, she wouldn't be able to run, and her friends would have to watch her Change and see her as she Became.
Melody wouldn't wish that on them in a million years.
"Ah- Ah.. ah gotta go!" Melody quickly stammered, her voice already grating over a throatful of convulsing muscles and shifting vertebrae. She casts a quick, apaologetic look to Ludo as she turned to run. "Anotheh time!"
She didn't blame him, of course, but he shouldn't have followed. There was another set of steps, and the smell of wolf. He was following, too.
No time. No time. No time. It was now. The Beast gave a howl of triumph, and Melody fell into the copse of trees, groaning, begging for another minute. She clawed her deforming hands at her leather armor, breaking the buckles and casting the human-contrived clothing aside. Her face convulsed as a tearing sound, crunching, writhing…organic...joined the other nights sounds of crickets, tree frogs and distant, skittering goblins.
"Melody!" Ludo was calling, but already his voice was drowned, turned nearly to an unintelligable muffle behind the rushing, pounding sound of her blood in her ears and the swelling of bone and flesh.
"D-don'...don't look at me like this!" was all she could manage before she stumbled into the night, naked, before her legs could give out completely. She lost them in the trees and their own puzzled revulsion. Good. For the next few minutes, Melody would be an ugly horror few men could bear to watch without going mad. It was a curse for a reason.
The itching became a burning and as Melody was flung forward over herself, brought down by the sudden twisting of her spine, the burning became a torment she'd not known even while in Hell's Lobby, awaiting Sune's mercy. She opened her mouth to scream, but her voice only emerged as a strangled gurgle as her throat filled with muscle and tongue. Her jaw popped and stretched, teeth already permanently sharp now elongated to the weapons of The Beast. Her feet and hands seemed like taffy of bone and skin, stretch marks appearing only to instantly be hidden by the sproating hair that forced its way from her skin. The pain grew as her internal organs boiled and shifted, pulled mercilessly into new positions within a ribcage that pop-fired with the sound of shifting bone.
Just as she could no longer bear it, and the last vestiges of her human mind begged any god who was listening to kill her and end her suffering... it was over.
Melody lifted her muzzle from the ground, exhaustion in every cell of her body, though that would only last a few moments. The world was a strange mixture of greys and browns, deep in detail that pierced the night and which her mind somehow still registered in terms of color. She rose to her paws and shook herself, feeling the vitality of The Beast awaken in her. Who was Melody Jilles? The name was foreign and meaningless. She was alive. She was free. She was powerful. She was here and to prove it, she lifted her head and howled, announcing her intentions and her presence, challenging the world to defy her the right to Hunt in this, the forest of her father.
For two days, Melody slaughtered goblins and ruled her domain. She could stalk the things without fear, now. Some part of her remembered having to run from the ugly creatures, but now? No. Their blood was foul and she would not - could not - eat them but the world was foul where they passed and so, for Selune and for the fire that burned within her blood she killed them. She passed through trees and into some sacred place that smelled of elves and men, but they were also of the forest and so she spared them. Deer were plentiful, anyway. The town proved a brief curiosity, but seeing fire, the wolf only moved on to other, less dangerous intrigues.
The rabbits ran from her as her paws pounded the soft forest floor. Squirrels chattered angrily at her as she prowled through thick fern growth. She pounced on mice. She bathed in the many streams. All around was life and death and the music of wild, untamed beauty.
In the end, there was no pain as the Beast faded back, slinking to its cage in her heart, satiated. But it remained, and receded only so far as it left her humanity in dominance, yet marked it with sharp, small teeth and eyes of spinning greens and golds that would reflect in the night with the ghostly green haze of canine inheritance.
A curse from her father. A goddess from her mother. As the sun rose and Melody came back to herself, rousing from the strange dreams of the forest to gaze upon a crispy morning, Melody was forced to wonder if there would ever be anything she could truly call her own.
But thoughts of self-indulgent pity were fleeting, and the call of a meado lark pulled her from the darker forces of pitiful humanity. She smiled and rolled to her belly, lifting her face from the frost-nipped grass. A small lake lay ahead of her, releasing lazy mist into the cold morning. Her body shivered in naked pleasure, thrilling in the exposure.
Melody flooped to her back and sighed, gazing upward at the overcast sky, clouds the color of chalk. It was a beautiful day, and Norwick was near, promising fire and friends and a new set of boots.
Her laughter spooked the lark, and it took wing.
-
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.
-
The gypsy camp had proven to be a fine choice for a home. The sun was setting, though it had long since become invisible to the denizens of the mountain pass, tucked as it was beyond the towering trees, the canopy of pine and shimmering oak, and the harsh mountains of ice and memory. It was quiet here. Quiet, but not isolated, and the love of family and traiditon that defined the Romani lifestyle seemed to wrap the forested nook in a perpetual aura of pink and amber devotion. Here amid the semi-permanent squatters of the Nars, a were-wolf could have a pack, even if she was alone amidst the members. But she wasn't alone in that either. Not here.
A family. A pack. And in that love, there was hope.
Beloved of Heaven; Beauty Divine:
My heart strings your lyre.
My soul - ever thine.
In you, let my will and fate intertwine
I am made perfect by your holy fire.Melody's flesh shone in luminent tones of precioues metals, gold and copper and bronze, as the campfire cracked irregular rhythms before her. As her mother before her, as in the forest temple of her father's land, Melody sat alone in the darkness, naked but for a borrowed wrap of red sash encircling her hips and thighs. Melody slowly pulled the hair brush through her thick, curling hair but it did little to tame the wildness of them. As she pulled, she recited a line of the liturgy her mother had invented and taught her
the prodigal daughter
who had spurned a goddess in youthful ignorance and now mourned a mother lost to a desease even love couldn't cure.
She must take time alone, at last. Yaervan had found her as she tried to hide here, avoiding people until she was healed. Something had gone wrong with the Change, though she couldn't remember what. There was cuts on her body, claw marks. Bruises that bore too close a resemblance to hands encircled her throat and wrists.
What if…
Please, no. Not ever that.
Melody set the hair brush aside as she looked to the fire, gatheringher hands to her belly. Slowly tracing the contours of her waist, upward to her ribs, along the sides of her breasts to her shoulders, the pillar of her neck expolored briefly, worshipped, before touching her face. Reminding herself, through touch, that this is her body. This is her, now, in this place, where the fire kisses her nakedness and the darkness protects her from the curiosity of the world. A woman, but not human for all her appearances, is doubly a strange creature.
You must be alone. Wolf-you will kill friends of human-you.
And why was that? Why, if the woman that was Melody and the wolf that was Melody were one and the same creature? Why must two bodies also mean two minds, two hearts? Her spirit remained.
You are wolf at heart.
But that wasn't true, either. As much as Yaervan wanted it and insisted that it was so, Melody wasn't a wolf. A were-wolf was so much more dangerous because it retained an essence of humanity, and humanity could be cruel and merciless in such ways and an animal would never dream.
WHAT AM I?!
The question lingered. It had followed her for days since she had awoken, battered, bleeding and covered in her own filth and vomit in the Rawlinswood. There had been a taste of blood in her mouth, but unfamiliar. Not goblin. Not - thank the goddess - human or elf or dwarf. Not halfling, nor gnome. Not deer, either, though that would have been welcome. Claw marks and hand prints. What had she done?
Wolf will never hunt Pack. And who was Pack? Who did she love? Her friends, yes - always. Her family, yes - forever. Men and woman of all races, nature in its splendor, the tiny moments of peace that came throughout the days of turmoil and confusion in this strange, frozen place. She loved all of those things. They defined her. All that was loved, all that was love, was part of Melody and made her.
But…
Love first yourself, save for Sune.
Did she love herself? Did she trust herself? She had been careful to disclose her nature to people, to warn them as well as test them, to extend honesty and trust as a matter of course in a submission to vulnerability that would invite love. But she had made them afraid, and Melody had known that they were right to be afraid. A curse could be such a fickle thing. So easily spread around.
Melody was afraid of herself, and trust was not there. Without trust, where was love? It was a pale, heretical ghost of itself that took what it wished and gave nothing in return.
Love without trust
Was at best
Only Lust.A Sunite must do more. To love others is easy. To love oneself could take a lifetime of patience. And without that, then she could not ever truly accept the love of others. She would have nothing to give in return.
Melody watched the flames, seeking the Dancer within the flickering yellows, reds and whites. When at last she could see Her, the Lady, writhing within the flame and becoming softly, Melody rose to her feet. The sash fell away to the gentle earth. The music of the night rose in vibrant crescendo of velvet and praise for the stars and the moon.
Melody began to dance.
-
Something is wrong.
I rise from the trees. The smell of death and blood and death and hate and death is everywhere. I inhale deeply. It dances on my tongue, bringing hot saliva to my fangs.
I rise from the trees and stand on my hind legs. Taller. It feels good. I smell everything. Everything. The earth, tainted. The forest, silent and afraid. All is red. All is hot. The darkness covers all in black and red and the moon is so bright. Silver light blinding, I lift my head and howl. For a moment, the din of fighting stops, but it doesn’t matter.
Run.
Two leg run is strange. I try all fours, as I should, but these paws! They grasp and claw when they should push. Good. There is death here, and it is me. The world is hateful. It hates me. Only the moon loves me, and she calls but no matter how far how fast how hard I run she is never any nearer. Why? Why do you run from me, Mother? Have I offended you? This body. I am a wolf more magnificent than has ever been! I stand, tall as a man, every muscle vibrant with strength to kill, speed to hunt, will to devour. Does this not please you?
I am coming.
The nasty nasty nasty things that crawl, crawl crawl in their coward shells of green and bile what horrible things these small wretched hunched snotwad slaves. They die so easily. They are amassed at the edge of the forest
My forest
and look toward the walls of Men stupid blind nose-dumb Men
I would do the world a favor to slay them all
but
but…
Sigh.
The nasty nasty nasty wretched snotwad things are turning toward me. They challenge me? They DARE challenge me in MY forest? Yes! Yes, they come for me and they slice at me but it is beautiful! Beautiful as the blood runs and beautiful as I lift them, lift them high into the air on my two legs two legs two legs and crush the skull. I slash the throat. I punch these curling paw-fists into the chest and tear out the hearts. I rip off the heads, tiny heads, ugly heads, good for them to die these nasty nasty nasty
They beat on skins to make sound to scare me off. I laugh. I howl. They scream. So many of them! I am not what they want, but I pull the ones from the edge of the herd, the edge where they are exposed and I drag the screaming ones away to slaughter, to pain. At last the herd moves on with their bile and their nasty nasty snotwad bodies to the place where Men wait.
Stupid Men. I should kill them. Maybe I will, if they come into MY forest.
Running again, into the forest. Silent and still and beautiful silver lit. I walk – I WALK – at the edge of the pond and take my rest. Take my drink. Is that me? Is that me that I see?
Wolf. Man. Fur. Hand. Tail. Breasts.
What am I?
WHAT AM I?
I run. Run from the water. Run from me. All is red and all is black and the world is full of hate, hate, hate, hate.
It hurts so much.
-
“Focus your fire at the breach!” Melody called out, drawing Raryl and Abel’s fire from the stream of goblins south of the broken wall. Leading by example, Melody drew back on her longbow and sent an arrow flying blink-fast into the left eye-socket of a goblin ‘basher.’ The armored, red-cloaked warrior and the strange, blood-lusting elf moved back to the edge of the precipice ledge and joined Melody in raining death on the invading horde.
The goblins kept coming. Already there were mounds of them, blood still dripping from recently mortal wounds and staining the earth with their sickly ichors. Flies had begun swarming around the untidy piles of death, and the air buzzed with their hum, a necromantic choir to undertone the soprano screams of arrow and slicing swords. Men and elf and even a half-orc pitted themselves against the assailing swarm of chattering goblins. Melody couldn’t understand it; the creatures were desperate and disastrous, but clever in their own filthy way. These goblins were mad, their eyes bright with evil and insanity. They clambered over the increasingly high mounds of their fallen kindred for a blind chance at striking at Norwick’s defenders. Some were successful for a swing or two before being cut down, clubbed or pierced. Most simply died before they could do anything but keep themselves from slipping in the ghastly, rising lake of blood.
“Keep the goblins off the defendehs! “ she called out again, pausing to refill her quiver with a new bundle of fresh arrows. “Focus yeh shots!” she reminded Abel, who had become so overcome by his thirst for violence that he was merely attacking anything that moved below. “Shoot the ones the swordsmen are fightin’! They’ll die fasteh.”
Rejoining the line of archers on the southeast ridge, Melody quickly surveyed the remaining wave of goblins. This was the third one in two hours, though it was nearly done. The exhausted swordsmen – joined now by some dark-skinned, chiseled spearman – cut through the last dozen or so with the contempt of finality. She helped the last frothing goblins to their deaths, keen in her own mind that she was doing them a trick of mercy. When at last all was quiet, save for the panting and pained groaning of the defenders and the ever present buzz of flies, Melody fells back from the ledge to catch her breath, stretch her arms, and reassess the previous day.
She hadn’t intended to come to Norwick, specifically. Norwick had been forbidden to her, by order of the Chancellor himself, or so Ronan had said. Since she had no cause to disbelieve her Peltarchian friend, she had accepted the judgment as one of cautious (perhaps paranoid) wisdom and had moved to the gypsy camp. She’d been accepted there, tentatively, but accepted nonetheless. Still, the woods surrounding the Romani camp were thick, crowded, and they crinkled with the shed chitin of spiders. Melody hated spiders, not in any kind of personal way, necessarily, but mostly because they were just really creepy and gross. She’d tried the other pass across the bridge in an experiment of curiosity, and had ended up cowering behind a Romani tent while some of the gypsy men sent a large gnoll to meet its maker. Not wanting to risk another embarrassment like that, Melody had vowed to move her lone hunting back south, where the woods were familiar and green.
She’d been heading toward the eastern side of the barbarian town, intending on circumventing the wall and heading south from there when she’d heard footsteps behind her. It was Yaervan… or, rather, it was the man Yaervan had become. His wolf “teacher” was not with him, but Melody had no doubts that it was nearby. Yaervan (or whatever he was calling himself, now) was clearly the subordinate pack member now. Melody was glad to see him, and was happily greeting her would-be wild lover when Attica rounded the wall and approached as well. She’d not seen the dramatic, passionately spirited cleric of the great elven patron god in over a month! Melody quickly introduced the two men, and the three set upon a course of action.
She needed someplace to hunt. Some place secluded, where she – or rather, the Beast – could do whatever damage it preferred to do without endangering anyone. Preferably someplace with game, or some prey whose demise would serve a benefit. Yaervan suggested the mountains, where the giants dwelled, but Melody wasn’t keen on testing herself
It testing IT the Beast not me
Against creatures with a propensity to step on things shorter than their ankles. Attica, however, knew of some nearby foothills which might serve, so long as she didn’t mind the occasional stray undead from the nearby cemetery.
Melody was intrigued. Fighting the undead was the proper work for a priestess, and undoubtedly whatever ghosts or nasty things lurked there were ugly beyond sanity, and so even more appropriate for a priestess of Sune to dispatch. They’d be inedible, but at least she might be able to use the Beast for once and earn a few brownie points with her much-missed goddess.
They three had set off. “But it’s dirty work,” Attica warned them. “This isn’t going to be for the faint of heart.”
“Phht! Ah aint afraid of no ghosts,” Melody boldly returned, earning a chuckle from Attica. Yaervan expressed his doubts about the wisdom of this endeavor, but stayed by Melody’s side in loyal attachment. She, in turn, stayed with him, and the two woodsmen followed the armored priest into the crypt.
To make a long story short, it was disgusting and smelled of mold, old rotted meat and something akin to a fart left behind by persons unknown to linger in a crowded store. Aticca came near to his death as the three ran from the underground tombs, but he still managed his parting dramatics.
“HEAR ME, YOU ABOMINATIONS!” he called back, even as he stood, nearly collapsing, in the stone doorway at the stairs. “YOU MAY HAVE BEATEN ME THIS TIME, BUT I WILL RETURN! YOU HAVEN”T SEEN THE LAST OF ME!“
Melody grinned in approval. Heroic dramatics were always appropriate.
Yaervan decreed that continuing the fight against the undead was “unwolflike.” He left without saying good-bye while Melody led the stumbling, gurgling Attica back to town. She stopped at the gates and pushed him inside in what, she hoped, was the general direction of Tristiana. A few hours passed, and he returned and the two agreed to meet at the south gate and, there, hunt together during her last few days as a woman for this moon’s cycle.
That’s when the midden hit the windwill, so to speak.
Melody was scouting the southern shores of the lake when the sound of fighting echoed distantly, coming from the north. Frowning, she started at a slow trot along the copse of trees, hoping to see what all the noise was about. Forced closer, she arrived in time to see a few defenders gathering at the southern gates – Abel and a Halfling female archer she didn’t know.
“What’s goin’ on? Ah heard a ruckus!”
“Goblins! They’ve breached the east wall!”
“Shit…” she murmured, taking off at a run. She rounded the wall in time to see Attica slicing down the last of an impressively gruesome goblin invasion. Hundreds upon hundreds of goblin corpses were towering against the walls, some still twitching as they were slowly crushed beneath the weight of their dead kin. Melody gagged against the stench and the horrible toll of death.
“Ah came as soon as ah could! Sorry; ah was south of the lake.” She offered needlessly to the wounded. Attica greeted her.
“Melody! Get inside the wall quickly. The goblins are attacking!”
Well, duh.
“Ah, you boys go on ahead. Get yehselves healed an’ such. Ah’ll stay out here an’ keep an eye out for yeh, and provide an early warning.” The offer was a dubious one. The extra few seconds she might afford would mean nothing, but going into Norwick would be death or, worse, arrest and incarceration in the local jail. Better to die than be caged.
Attica gave a snort of disgust. “Melody, don’t be ridiculous. No one’s paying attention to that nonsense.”“Why no come inside?” rumbled a slurred bass of a voice. The half orc licked his drool-flecked lips and looks at the diminutive woman with dumb curiosity.
Melody just smiled at the big bruiser. “Every girl has her time of the month.”
Just then, a call went up from the defense ridg: “GOBLINS!” Melody wheeled, and faced the oncoming wave of slavering goblins…
…at their own level. Outside the wall. Unprepared.
“Why are there archers down here?” she shouted, an anger of desperation rising up in a sudden bubble of bile-tasting familiarity. Time was getting short. Gods-damned goblins! “Get up on that ridge! Take the high ground!”
Attica nodded and rounded up the swordsmen. “Shaw! Take the rear guard!” he shouted, and there was more but Melody was hustling over a short wall of goblin bodies and the remnants of the Norwick wall to find a way up to the ridge.
“Shit!” she squeaked in panic, and jumped the last of the debris to climb inside the town as the first of the goblins clashed with the swordsmen at the breach. Arrows shrieked from above as the defending archers began to peg the first lines of the new wave of invaders. The swordsmen and shield bearers closed in behind her and filled in the breach as she took up position by a ground boulder. The fighting began again, and lasted for such a time as no one would ever be able to determine. When there was the briefest pause, Melody scrambled up a nearby ladder and joined the line on the ridge.
Another wave came. Then a third. “Focus yeh fire!” she called, and then more time passed. More goblins died. More flies came. Norwick began to stink and the sky was filling with circling buzzards awaiting the peace and quiet of the aftermath. Melody’s skin began to itch.
The day was wasting. She couldn’t see the moon, but she could feel it, pulling at her from below the horizon, sending up its ghostly siren song.
I am coming. I am coming. Run to me. Worship me. Honor me with blood.
Melody pushed down her discomfort, taking a few moments of prayer between the third and fourth wave. “Sune, please. I beg yeh. Just one more day! Just one!”
Sune had no sway over Her mother, however, and the moon peeked above the treeline. She was a sliver slice from fullness, but it was close enough. Tomorrow afternoon would see her fresh, glowing and full, staring upon a new wolf in the forest. Assuming, of course, Melody survived until then.
She turned from her prayers to look below at the breached wall. Atticus and some of the other men were pushing large stones to plug the wall. Good. That would hold them for a while. Long enough to get reinforcements and allow Melody to slip away. She headed for the gate to do just that, but saw the new guards posted there, blocking her exit. Distantly, she could hear Atticus.
“Atticus!” she called, sliding down the earthen ramp from the defense ridge to the southern ground of Norwick. Atticus looked over with a smile of exhausted accomplishment.
“Melody! There you are!”
“Atticus, ah gotta get out! The guards…”
But Atticus’s attention was drawn by the calling of a name. Lucious, Chancellor of Norwick, had arrived in response to the need of his town. Melody choked on her tongue. If he saw her, her freedom was null and void! Melody tried to reach for Attica to get his attention once more, but he was already running off, and calling for the elf. In his friendship, he was bringing the Chancellor’s attention, personally, to Melody.
“Chancellor!” he called, and might have said more, but by then Melody was scrambling back up the hill. The palisade wall atop the ridge had a gate, and she went through to the variously concealed places of defense that lined the southern face of the barbarian village. The red-cloaked warrior and Abel were there, taking up text-book positions of sight defense along the ridge. Melody scrambled behind a rock and hid like a scared girl.
Amazing coincidence about that.
The girl-who-cried-wolf gazed over the edge of the not-quite-short-enough cliff, and sighed. She’d break both her legs on that jump. She rubbed and scratched at her flesh, feeling the first electric tingles of burning. There was no time.
And drums were sounding. It was war.
Hanging her head, Melody inhaled a stinking breath of courage and stood. She would face the Chancellor and the unknown fate his fear would decree for her. Melody walked, stiff lipped and chin tight, to the palisade gate and stood on the ridge, overlooking Attica and the conversing Chancellor.
Attica was speaking her defense. “…and she fought off the attacking goblins AND she helped me to purge the undead from the crypts AND she brought me back to town to save my life AND she led the archer defen-“
“That’s enough.” The Chancellor was firm in voice, his words thick with authority, needing no volume.”
“Yes, sir.” Attica shut up. Lucidious turned his attention upward, and locked eyes with Melody. Her nostrils flared, and her feet itched to run, but she held her ground, grip tightening on her bow. She knew she wouldn’t stand a chance against the Chancellor, his robes and staff marking him a mage, but maybe with this vantage point, she could get a few shots off, anyway, and make her stand before death.
Heroic dramatics.
“Is that her?”
“Yes, sir. Melody! Commere!”
She wasn’t Attica’s dog to be called. She simply gave her friend a nod, then returned her stare to Lucidious. “Ah just want to leave, sir,” she said, making her words slow and soft, forcing back the growl that ached to release from her throat.
Lucidious turned toward her more fully, clearly assessing the young woman. He hadn’t known her, but clearly he considered her a threat to his people. What was left of them, anyway.
“Are you the werewolf?”
Melody nodded. “Ah need to get somewhere secluded. There aint any time left.”
Atticus seemed surprised and dismayed. “Melody, is it tonight?” Spoken with affection and a desire to understand, bless him, but something in his assumptions of sympathy grated her nerves. She ground her teeth, baring her small, ineffective canines and stared hard at the elf below.
“Are yeh goin’ to let me go, or are yeh guards goin’ to give me any trouble?”
The elf, his bearing the unflinching majesty of an Alpha male, slowly rose the embankment to the ledge where she stood. Melody fell back a step or two before remembering herself. She puffed up her chest a little, tightened her jaw, and stared at the elf.
The stand-off lasted only a few moments. “Go,” he whispered, then turned away with a snort. He had bigger issues to keep him occupied. The Chancellor turned his back to her as he moved off to direct the defenders.
Melody released a long breath of relief, but wasted no time. She raced, slipping, down the side of the ridge and toward the gate and, beyond, freedom.
“Ah’ll see what ah can do from outside!” she called back, knowing there would be nothing, that there was now no time left, but she would give it her best effort of intentions. She made it as far as the tree-line just south of the east wall when the drums started in nearby earnest.
Melody had time enough to sink into the shadows of the trees and ready her bow when, suddenly, pain filled her in a red haze that blinded her to the world. It was something new, something wicked, and all that was Melody the human shrank away into oblivion. Her last vision was of a gesturing goblin shaman stepping dimly into view from an unnatural shadow, casting curses upon the edge defenders.
And then there was pain.
(to be continued…)
-
Melody woke to the sound of nearby work. Guards yelled at one another in mroning banter, greeting and exchanging language best suited away from young ears. The hammerfells of rebuilding began, and rang through her with a jarring electric jolt.
Wham. Wham. Wham!
Rolling to her belly, her bare bottom kissed the wind as she lifted her head. Hair, so darkly brown it was nearly black, rustled sleepily about her freckled face. Green eyes rimmed and flecked with golden, amber rememberance of a canine half-life gazed across the slate waters of Norwick's lake toward the small village. It was just past dawn, and humans were awakening. Time to move.
Time to find her clothing.
They were never far, and she'd made a mental note when she'd arrived to try her best to Change in the same place, or around the same place. Hopefully, no one would find her things and claim them. But somehow they were always around, though this time a bit skattered, covered by leaf and dirt and old stains. Human trappings for a human existance filled with human longings and human problems.
Yaervan. He hadn't been a wolf. Not like her. But he'd wanted it, and he'd wanted her. The memory of the man who'd cut so immediately into the quick of her spirit, to the duality of her nature with such casual affection, came like a spike to the her skull.
A pause only, then she dressed. She no longer blamed herself, though she knew she bore responsibility. He'd left on his own, but he'd been her Pack. He'd wanted it so, and she'd accepted, even if they could speak. Their time together was strange but lovely beyond words.
Revenge would come to those responsible. No goblin would ever be safe, again. They woul dknow of her anger, and feel the wrath of a goddess's servant.
Melody turned toward Norwick, her pack still loaded with brick and brack to sell.
-
(Song lyrics “New Deep” by John Mayer. Fit so nicely with what I had in mind for the story, I thought I’d include them as a secondary support for Melody’s bardic upbringing.)
The fog of pain drifted away in a whisper of evening breeze. Memories of something tragic and terrible…
(his name was Yaervan)
…vanished as though a dream. Waking to the night, the sounds of crickets and the smells of grass, trees and rushes cleansed the wolf’s mind of the disjointed, unimportant things that came between. There was the full moon. There was always the full moon, somewhere, though right now the Mother was only a ghost tucked behind the trees, peeking, waking. The wolf knew the feeling, and yawned in amused sympathy, lolling a long tongue in a lazy curl as she stretched. Spread toes, bare the claws, arch the back, bend the head and delight in the shiver of newness that rushes through the spine. It was time to run again, and the world was before her, fresh, crisp and untamed. Simple and sweet; the Moon, the Night, the Hunt. Everything sprang from these things, and all was right. All was perfect. Everything beyond the borders of these things belonged to the godlings of Men and their ilk. In other words, then meant nothing at all.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, there was gratitude and relief at this. She was free. Free of pains and complexities. Free of sadness, guilt, and the burdens of love. Free of the memories of what could have been, should have been, and would have been.
It was time to run.
I’m so alive
I’m so enlightened I can barely survive a night in my mind.
So I’ve got a plan.
I’m gonna find out just how boring I am
And have a good time.The forest was the perfect place; flat grassy land sprinkled with the crispy, poking needles of the shedding evergreens tingling her paws, the scent of pine and birch and ash a pleasant background music to the nasal orchestra of squirrel spore, deer musk and badger. A hawk, roused from its sleep, squealed its anger at her as she rushed beneath, but she was already long gone by the time the bird returned its head to its wing. Pricks of pain danced electric and beautiful up her legs as she moved the earth beneath her, bringing a rush of pleasure in counteractive endorphins. Everywhere there was dark shadow that opened to her in a blooming of miracle browns and tones of grey.
She slowed her pace after a while, her breath coming as hot clouds of mist from her nostrils. Lapping at the cold mountain water of the tundra stream, a rustle in the frosty grass alerted her to the presence of a mouse. Every muscle tensed, still, waiting; the reward for her patience and daring came quickly as the mouse, his dumb nose filled with the promising smells of buried thistle seeds, emerged from the embankment. She pounced, and the satisfying crunch and squeak of the rodent’s death became a mouthful of sweet snack.
‘Cause everytime I’ve tried
Trying not to find
Every little meaning in my life
It’s been fine.
I’ve been cool with my new golden rule.The night filled with hunting. Deer were too much for a lone wolf, but night rodents were slaughtered by the dozens, gulped down in an endless hunger stoked by a month’s waiting. No memory of the time between, but the long slumber of a forgotten humanity left a gaping hole in the wolf’s appetite. What else mattered?
Numb is the new deep.
Down with the old me!
Talk is the same cheap it’s been.Morning arose slowly in a foggy haze like a drunkard after a midnight binge. The lake absorbed the sun’s dim light and offered heat first, and filled the tundra morning with mist. But the sky was a solid blue-grey nothing that promised clear skies for a few hours, anyway. Storms would come later, but for now the wolf lifted her nose from her tingling paws to the chorus of the morning birds. Larks and thrushes competed for the praise of Lathander’s bounties, for whichever had the most beautiful song would gain the greatest bounty of His gifts. The resulting choir would bring tears to the eyes of lesser creatures, like a human, but for the wolf this was the perfect, natural state. This was how the world was intended to be. The thrum of the frogs, the whistling soprano of the field birds, the rustling wind and the wind through her fur echoed through the Rawlinswood while she took her drink at the lake.
Beauty was everywhere. The breeze turned and twisted the brittle leaves of the ash and silvery birches, glittering in their oscillations. Her grey-black fur made her a wraith in the daytime, marred only by her mask of auburn brown over her muzzle and face. She was beautiful. The world was beautiful. Save, of course, for the straight, awkward arrangement of stones that walled away the humans. But since they didn’t matter, anyway, then she ignored them. Men and Elves, Gnome and Halfling, Orc and Goblin… all with their complicated ways, their complicated thoughts and their need to find meaning, strength and nobility in Things Beyond. Even the druids in their circle, making all things holy; they were stupid. Contemptible and worthy only as prey or for scavenging their kills. She would never be one of them.
Is there a god?
Why is She waiting?
Don’t you think of it odd
When She knows my address?
Look at the stars!
Don’t they remind you just how feeble we are?
Well, it used to, I guess.
‘Cause every time I’ve tried
Trying not to find every little meaning in my life
It’s been fine!
I’ve been cool with my new golden rule…Splendor abounds. Praise be to the parting grasses who hide my step. Praise be to the whispering trees who herald my approach. No love; no hate. No anger; no vengeance. Only the rhythm. Only the music. Only this endless revolution of moon and dream.
Numb is the new deep!
Down with the old me.
Talk is the same cheap it’s been.
I’m a new man. I wear a new calonge.
And you wouldn’t know me if your eyes were closed.
I know what you’ll say;
That this won’t last longer than the rest of the day.
But you’re wrong this time.
You’re wrong.The second night. The last night, but the wolf did not know this. It was time to Hunt in earnest. Westward, toward the setting sun, with the Mother promising silver light upon her back. The scents of the Rawlinswood was polluted with the stench of passing humans and elves and dead goblins. Their blood suffocated the grass here, making it brown and unlovely, and only the deer came here, to nibble on low branches and abide by the goblins that distracted the hunters from themselves. Westward more, and goblins mingled with larger things, grotesque and unappetizing. There were fewer human tracks, here, which was the only blessing but still the wood remained corrupted. Perhaps tonight she could cleanse them. Kill and kill and kill until all was clean once more, bathing the forest in the blood of those unworthy to tread her sacred paths, that being anyone but herself.
Love yourself first. That remained. But as she moved through the trees, bringing death and accepting pain as her reward for her good works, something stirred within. Something nearly forgotten, and it bubbled, a voice from the deep mire of her instincts, bringing back memories of those dreams better left forgotten.
(save Sune his name was Yaervan and he loved me)
A snort. A shake of her head, growling at herself for the distraction. No. Not yet. Not yet; there was death to deal and paths to find and Selune, great moon, Mother of even that fire-haired whore…
(love all must be love or else we deserve nothing)
…run! Run and run and forget! Forget the dreams of such burdens; forget the pain that will never heal. Forget the complication. Forget as the wind bites through our fur to sink into our bones and chill our guts
my guts
as we lay down here, in the silvery meadow, our belly full and our limbs quivering and our mid filling with such hateful things
things of love and poetry and beauty so subtle that only the keen mind, the mind of Men, can see it
beauty of the heart
of soul
of self.
You know I used to be the back porch poet
With a book of rhymes always open
Knowing all the time that
I’m probably never going to find the perfect rhyme
For “heavier things.”
-
Second Moon: Human (Prologue)
The itch had started in her feet this time and was spreading up her legs. An under-skin rash that denied relief, Melody judged the spread of its influence and the intensity. There was still time left, and deer to hunt. Meat and more meat, that’s what she needed, so that when it finally happened, her body wouldn’t burn out from a lack of protein. Fur, new bone structure, muscle tendons stretching and reforming… it was never pleasant but it would be even more so without a good bellyful of good, old fashioned animal polymers.
Ludo was ahead, slicing through goblins with a new halberd. Yaervin was near, always near, and the sound of his running and the rhythm of his fighting was a comfort. He was a wolf, like her; she was sure of it. No, she hadn’t seen him Change, but the body language was undeniable. Yaervan understood things Ludo could only empathize, and having the man nearby was always comforting. Words were useless, and the freedom of that burden of speech was as delightful as it was frightening.
The waves of goblins ebbed as they moved west beyond the ruined tower, south away from the bluffs of the Nars and into the tundra forests. Suddenly, there were deer everywhere, and the musk of their scent was as intoxicating to Melody as any doe in estrus. The hunger of the impending change was undeniable, and Melody slipped away a little as the Beast came forward. When the bow failed, the sword came out, artificial claw to rend and rip and bleed the deer into stupid panic before they died. The fear made the meat sweeter.
First one, then two. A third was in her sights and she sent an arrow into its hide before Yaervan intervened. What he was saying was lost, something elven and insistent but meaningless. Melody snarled at him, but he only stood in the way once more.
“Mine!” she shouted at him angrily, a snarl of warning of its heels as she took aim once more. This time, Ludo interrupted, and with his bright armor of flashing red and yellow, the deer bolted erratically to freedom with Yaervan close on its trail.
“Melody! Stop!” Familiar sounds with purpose, those words, and with effort she drew to a halt, body tense. Her throat rumbled with a low growl, eyes like hot lanterns of green-reflected brightness, the whites pumped full of blood by injury and lust.
“Why?” Mine: the deer, the forest, the people... all mine. To die or live as I choose. Mine.
“You have to stop now,” Ludo said again, this time reaching out toward the young woman, and stroking a hand through her wild, black hair. “Shhh. Melody. “
Trembling, she allowed it, and soon the adrenaline was leaving a bitter taste of waste in her mouth, every muscle strung tight and loosed in a wave of dissatisfaction. The Beast grumbled its unhappiness as Melody rose to the surface to stare up into the eyes of her lover.
Ludo smiled as she relaxed. “If you kill them all, they can’t repopulate.”
“Ah… ah know. It’s just hard,” Melody choked, swallowing the coppery tang of fresh blood on her lips, blood on her hands. “The closer ah get, the hardeh it is.”
Ludo nodded his understanding. In the distance, Melody could see Yaervan, his hand gentle upon the injured deer. He was tending its wounds, the wounds inflicted by Melody’s arrows, and soothing the beast into passivity. He’d been trying to warn her, but he’d made no sense. Melody turned her gaze toward the blood stained meadow and winced inwardly as the carnage.
Goblin corpses lined the copse to the north, already drawing flies. In the open grass between the trees, amid the dotted flowers and drifting seed fluff, the bodies of three full grown buck, each with a small rack of antlers, lay stiff and bloating in the late afternoon sun. Their guts were spilled haphazardly, killed brutally for the sake of achieving their deaths rather than the clean kill of a merciful hunter.
Melody rubbed at her arms as the itch spread toward her wrists.
“I know,” Ludo said, his voice full of sympathy. “But I think it’s time to get back to town, now.” Allowing herself to be led back toward the kills to strip them and discard the messes, Melody saw Yaervan slip away with the deer, taking it away from the scene and from Melody herself. Ludo watched over her instead as she cut flesh from bone and wrapped it in wide swaths of fatty hide as the stinking entrails were left, an offering to the predators of the forest.
Finally, silence settled in once more, and the insects moved in to claim their territory on the corpses. There was fresh meat again, so her task was finished. Ludo was close. Yaervan…
…was missing.
“Yarvin? Yarrrrviiiiin!” Melody lifted her voice, calling his name. In the next moment her vocal chords slipped and his name became a howl of yearning, a call to others of the pack.
Arrwooooooo…
“Melody…” Ludo began, but his voice was cut short as the first rock flew through the air and clanked from the side of his armor. The rock-tossing goblin stared in baleful hatred from the shadows as its club-weilding brothers moved in. The goblins erupted from the brush in a wave of green, sickly smelling ugliness, and Melody fell back in a stumble. Her bow was tangled in her cloak for one moment to long, and the soldier’s sword sliced the back of her thigh.
Melody lifted her voice again, this time in a yowl of pain, calling out to her allies for aid. Her call was answered by a not-too-distant howl, its signature timber a deep, masculine mirror for her own.
Yaervan. The half-elf was close, but his voice was filled with pain and a rising panic of his own. A second, softer call of a wolf – a true wolf – from the same general location indicated that he was no longer alone. Good. Melody turned to fight the small gang of goblins at her knees as Ludo swept death through their ranks. Hard, ugly bodies were cut in two or pierced with deadly arrows once again, and the misty aroma of blood filled the air once more.
The Beast started to stretch, rise, and take notice. The itch was becoming a burning, still deep – there was still some time – but the impending inevitability had the oppressive weight of black clouds rolling in on a hot, summer afternoon. The fight ended, but the Beast was only hungry for more. Melody couldn’t help but agree.
“Come on; it really is time for us to go,” Ludo said, his voice ringing with the command of an Alpha though he smelled so unavoidably, saltily human. Deliciously human.
“Ah gotta find Yarvin,” Melody insisted, pulling a mace from the clutches of a dead goblin.
“He’s fine.”
“No, he aint fine! Ah can’t hear him,” Melody protested.
Ludo was adamant, and moved closer to her. As Melody began to call for Yaervan once more, the Sentinel initiate pulled her close, a hand stroking through her hair once more as he pulled her cheek toward his chest. Enveloping her body, Melody could only sink into submission.
“He’ll be fine.”
Melody looked up at Ludo and his certainty. “Yeh promise?” The man nodded, offered a smile and kissed her forhead.
“Of course.”
Melody relaxed, allowing herself the faith that he was right. She nodded, but look a last look around, just in case there was some movement of green leather or burnished brown hair curling in the breeze to prove Ludo right. There wasn’t.
“Take me home?”
A smile. “Of course.”
They walked a little ways.
“So, yeh really don’t blame me?”
“No, of course not. Why would I?”
Melody shrugged. “Some people do.”
“Some people are idiots.”
Melody kept her opinions about that to herself. People should be afraid of me. They were right to reject me, once they found out about this.
Ludo walked with her the rest of the way back to Norwick. As they came to the southern gate, she stopped and he settled to strip from his metal armor down to his trousers and shirtless chest. Melody stopped inside the gate, one foot in the civilized world (such as it was) or Norwick, the other on the edge of the wild, dangerous places where monsters roamed.
“Ah’m gonna go look for him.”
Ludo started to say something, but only clamped his mouth shut ina moment of second wisdom. He approached the dirty young woman instead and left a kiss on her forehead. “Just be careful. I’m going to go do some work now,” he added. “Maybe I can look for you when I’m done?”
She nodded, knowing the truth (that he shouldn’t) and forced a smile to her cracked lips. “Ah’d love that, yeah.” So Ludo vanished beyond the interior gate and Melody turned out once more toward the western Rawlinswood.
Four hours later, she still hadn’t found the body. There were fresh goblin bodies everywhere, so someone had come through. There were tracks made by small metal boots – an elf in armor, most likely – but the stench of rot and blood permeated the air, denying her the scent of her soul mate. Defeated, Melody took out her frustrations on a lone, small goblin, tormenting it before finally ending its misery. Anger and pain heralding the onset of the first stages of Change as she tore the goblin’s head from its small shoulders, then cast the corpse aside. She turned for home.
Nearing the gates once more, Melody heard approaching footsteps. Small, by the sound of them, and metal as well, though well oiled; still, the scrape is unavoidable and unmistakable. But heavy, far heavier than an elf should ever make. Melody lifted her eyes and turned her head to see, curious.
An armored elf (no one could mistake the height and the girth) carried a larger form in his arms. Muscles stained with blood and filth roped in sinewy lines over long limbs, and green leather armor covered it. Covered him. Melody’s tongue caught in a sudden dry lump in the middle of her throat as she caught sight of the dark chestnut hair and the gently sloped ears. Yaervan, dead for hours by the color and smell. Yaervan, found by some stranger, carried back toward hope by someone else.
“Yarvin?! Yarvin! No! No, no, no, no, no….” The protests, denying what every sense o her body knew to be true. Heedless, stupid, wasteful energy by her human self the Beast looked on without pity. As Melody’s heart broke, it filled the pain with a balm of cold, animal pragmatism. He left. He was not alone.
But Melody didn’t listen.
“Yarvin! Yeh gotta wake up!” Melody nearly tackled the elf and sent him back as she ran to the body and laid her hands upon the cold, still face. “Please? Wake up, Yarvin! Come on, yeh gotta… gotta move… please…”
“He is beyond the words of any, save for a cleric,” the elf said, his softly monotone words tempered by sympathy. As Melody collapsed to the ground in unabashed weeping, the elf set the body down before her and laid a hand on her arm.
Melody howled. The Beast took out its anger on the first target available; she sank her teeth into her own arm and bit. As her mouth filled with blood, her own blood, the Beast sighed in satisfaction. Shared pain was shared understanding.
The elf, seeing Melody’s self abuse, slapped her firm and hard.
Melody winked out of existence. The Beast moved forward in a rush. How dare it! HOW DARE IT!? She growled, body coiling and spine arching in a posture of warning as blood pooled in her right glove. The elf stood, taking a posture of defense, but left his weapon alone. Good for him. Good for her.
As Melody screamed, she ran back into the forest, leaving the elf and the body of her wild love behind. She left a trailed of clothing in her trail, the footprints in the frosted grass changing shape as they progressed, from the small prints of a dancer to the large clawed paws of a wolf.