snow is (fair) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-27 10:39:00 |
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Her childhood cottage was behind her, far away and a dark shape in the distance, but Snow’s eyes were forward. Belle had mentioned the mountains and its highest, loneliest, peak and her blue eyes were trained upon it. She was still working on this… snow… thing. Her grip on her emotions was getting better and she was still seeking alternative methods of containing it. But she hadn’t stopped thinking of a last resort, somewhere far away and remote. Just in case, where the cold couldn’t hurt anyone else anymore. She kept trekking up the mountain. It was cold, as it was just about everywhere, but the lone traveler didn’t seem to mind or notice. Her dark hair was loosely plaited into a french braid, the wind occasionally tugging tendrils from the folds to let them brush against her cheeks. Her blue jeans tapered dark towards her feet as her black boots stomped through the snow, soaking up the cold without a second thought. On her back, a black pack was slung, some food and water and her journal, just in case. Her red plaid top wouldn’t have looked so out of place if not for the way she rolled up the sleeves, stopping them at her elbows, as if the climb upwards was warming her and winding her, and the cold was a sweet relief and not chilling her to the very bones. And for her, that was true. Though there was no snowfall, not at that very moment, the air around her still carried the harsh bite of winter. There wasn’t another soul for miles, at least she thought so. When she heard the crunch of branches and the crush of snow behind her she stopped her hike to spy just who or what was now behind her. The wolf was running. He still hadn’t chosen a human name. He had refused such attempts to tame him and give him personhood and substance in their world. But he had seen things through the eye of the hotel, been something, and it had shaken loose a flurry of snatches of memory, like old dead leaves. He didn’t want them, but the more he swiped them away, the further they slipped from his grip. It was as useless as biting at the wind, trying to escape them. In them, though, he had found one worthwhile thing, one thing that made the world seem like a place that still made sense. He remembered running, and what it meant to run and simply be...different. To run and to know he was a wolf, still, to know where his bones should crack and be, to know the length of teeth and the weight of fur. The castle had become a claustrophobic island in the snow, too much must and dust and inside, and after the things the hotel had shown him he couldn’t take it, not for a second more. He had gone out into the snow, clutching his sides, dressed in an old white shirt and the boots he’d been given, and he’d run into the forest beyond the castle. He did not know the Beast’s forest, or the creatures there, but he knew forests. He had lived in a forest deadened by winter, just like this one, for his hungry years. He knew the smell of cold wet dead, of faint greenery whispering under snow, the brown musk of rustling wild things that survived. He ran in the forest until snow kicked up onto his wet cold legs, and after a long time, nearly running through the edge of exhaustion, after tearing his skin and bleeding, he was a wolf again. Things were right. He knew it wouldn’t stay, and even as he found his shape he remembered the warlock’s words about the temporariness of changing back, but for the moment it was relief enough. He ran through the forest, and he carried his human clothes in his mouth, prepared for the long, cold trek back. He ran, paws pounding and kicking up snow, the biggest, darkest shape in that forest. He evaded memory and the darkness of the woods by falling into shadow. He ran until he had no breath left, until he was too tired to think about what it could all mean. By the time he had worn his energy thin he felt the tug of magic on him, pulling him back to the human shape again. It was like a hand on his shoulder while he was sleeping, trying to pull him from a dream he’d so hoped for, and he resisted it for as long as he could. It was not a pretty thing, changing back, and the sounds he made scared the birds from the trees in a thick black cloud, the swallows swooping and whirling in their inexorable, hypnotizing tornado against the leaden sky. When he was numb and bare, kneeling in the snow with his head turned to the treetops as he caught his breath, he realized he smelled magic. It was thick in the woods around him, so thick he could cut it with a knife. He pulled on his shirt with painful, cold fingers, then his trousers, then his boots. The uselessness of human skin, so fragile and sensitive to cold. He had no coat, and he brushed the snow from his arms as he got shakily to his feet. He turned, and did not see the woman behind him. Deaf human ears didn’t hear her, not until her foot crunched in the snow, and he turned, sharply. His eyes were as dark as ever, teeth bared, ready for a fight. But it was only the woman, the princess, and his snarl faded. “Oh,” he said, clasping his arms around each other, shivering defiantly. “It’s you.” It was the running that alerted her to him, and though logic told her to be afraid she couldn’t quite fear anything that was there. For weeks she had been out of control, frustratingly out of control and creating a winter that no one had seen in some time. She, as far as she was concerned, was the thing to be afraid of in that frozen forest and whatever made that noise was a clear second. It was curiosity that had her following the tracks and the figure darting through the trees. The birds scattered and the animals hid but Snow could sense the lingering tingle of magic, not her own, that followed the shape and as she managed to get closer, and the familiar figure of a wolf came into view, she still felt no fear. She had long since stopped being immediately afraid of wolves. He was still far ahead of her when he changed, the four legged mass twisting in the distance and that blasted curiosity compelling her closer. By the time she came upon him in the woods he was pulling on his shirt and snarling at her, and the surprise of who it was stopped her in her tracks faster than any threat his now blunted teeth offered her. “...Wolf?” Her blue eyes darted over him, head to foot, seemingly looking for any signs of the wolf she followed and barely comprehending that there were none. Last she saw him, he was at the Beast’s castle, and he was bemoaning that he had been cursed to a human shape. She assumed turning back was out of the question. Then she started, realizing his shiver and what it meant. Her mind sharpened, focusing on the air around them with a slight furrow of her brow, letting the temperature rise a few degrees warmer. A feeble effort at best, the harshest bite of winter dulling its very edge and nothing more. Her mind was too scattered to do any real good. “Christ, Wolf,” she chided harshly, “what are you doing here? It’s freezing.” A most astute observation but he was out there in a shirt and pants. Strange transformation aside, even as a wolf he would shouldn’t have been out there in the cold. As a man it was practically a death wish. Her face turned away from him and back down the mountain, down toward the cottage she had left behind. “You need to get out of here. Go back down to the cottage. It’s too cold up here for you.” Never mind that she seemed to be faring quite nicely. What was he doing here? He had no good answer for that. “I was running,” he said, but that was all, at first. He hadn’t realized how cold it would be in the mountains, and he dipped his head and cursed. Being vulnerable was not a good trait if you wanted to survive, and it made him pull closer into himself. If he didn’t admit how cold he was, maybe it wouldn’t be obvious. “I ran as far as I could, but that...witch,” he spat. “That magician, his curse made me like this again. I can’t run like this.” It was a bitter confession. His human body was useless for making his way swiftly and safely back down the mountain. The declaration was not a request for help, but more a thought spoken out loud. He still hadn’t fully mastered internalizing his thoughts, yet. What tumbled from his lips was truth, as unguarded as his body in the ice and snow. “Why are you here?” he asked. His shoulders were shaking in the wind. A little of the bite lifted from it, but almost nothing at all. He looked her over, and was struck by something about her. What was it? There was something in her dark hair against the snow, the white and black forest, her lips like downy red flower petals peeking through the frost. Life in the cold. In the long winter years, he had almost never seen it, but once he had spotted a solitary flower, struggling through the snow. He had been starving then, flopped on the snow without even the energy to hunt, no food in days. But the flower still existed, still strove for light, regardless of the suffering of all the dead, starved creatures in the forest. The world was a cruel place, and every thing survived on its own in the cold, from flowers to wolves. She should have known that Faust would have had a hand in this and the confusion melted away from her brow. Transitions between wolf and man and back would take some getting used to; she hadn’t forgotten her time with Bigby and the knife she used to give him that ability. It made the tension that had crept into her shoulders abate just a little, thinking he wouldn’t appreciate the moment of empathy and finding it a hard voice to quiet. It returned almost immediately as he stared at her, and she suddenly felt the weight of his question. There was, of course, no reasonable explanation for her being out there. Not without telling him where she was going, why she was going. “I was… running,” she ended simply, his words coming back to her, and she found herself glancing away for a moment under his stare. Her gaze fell upon her rolled sleeve, stark red upon her snow skin, and she started to pull them down to cover her once more. To cover her like any sane, normal, person should be covered in the middle of a snow storm. “And getting you out of here,” she replied, this time her words having more conviction than confession, punctuating her announcement with a determined flourish as her cuffs brushed her wrists. “Come on,” she said, moving closer to lead him by example down the mountain. Her fingers hesitated at his arms, never quite one for physical gestures, not in many years. But his clothes were barely going to keep out the cold – her cold – and she pressed her palm to his arm and rubbed small lines, letting the friction give gentle warmth to soak in his skin. He could bare those teeth at her again and snap if he wanted her to stop but until then… “I’ll start a fire at the cottage.” It was strange, how untouched by the cold she truly was, but the wolf had known witches before, knew their strangeness and how impermeable they were for the forces of the natural world. “Running,” he said, flatly. He had always been a creature of cunning. He would never have survived as long as he had without a keen mind and an almost preternatural sense for trouble on the horizon. “From?” Even witches could be made to run from something. There were things in the world more frightening than they. He had seen one or two himself, and kept a broad distance. There was no shame in fleeing from a fight that couldn’t be won. She looked like a spirit. He had seen one or two of those, in the woods, human and animal shapes that drifted, ethereal and on unshod feet through the ash and snow. He watched as her fingers came close to his skin and hesitated there, and he watched her. He wasn’t afraid of her touch, but there was suddenly an open curiosity alongside the consistent defensiveness of a cornered creature. There was almost no time when he didn’t feel cornered, of late. Her fingers on his skin did make him warmer, and he blinked at her from behind shaggy blonde hair. A fire sounded good, and he could admit that the warmth from her palms made him realize just how close to freezing he actually was. “Alright,” he grated. The offer of a fire made something click into place, and he understood. “You built the cold,” he said, matter of fact. “So you build the fire.” There might even have been a flicker of humor to that, even shivering in the snow, a wolf’s smile. He knew. His question as to what made her flee had her arching one delicate dark brow. She hadn’t asked him what exactly made him flee the castle and the fact that he pressed her for more answers, needled the shroud she pulled over herself, made her bristle. She didn’t have to answer that and instead gave him a hard stare. It faded, however, the minute he gave her the grin. Wolves were far too clever for her liking and the shock of his realization rippled across her features. “I…” she started with a shake of her head. “I don’t know what…” Her cornered expression held for a long moment, her mind tumultuously reeling between fear and anger and worry and it took the sensation of her braid batting against her cheeks to realize that a harsh wind had picked up, whipping against them and bringing it with the beginning of a fresh snowfall. “Dammit, Wolf!” This time it was she who snarled, a sharp cut of white against red lips as she bared her teeth angrily. She pulled her hand away from him and let them both ball into fists as her side, trying to focus her attention on the air around them and just as suddenly as the cold came, it left, the storm disappearing and leaving them in the chilly, but now quiet, forest. She turned her glower back to him. “You are not telling anyone.” There was little use in denying it now. Time for damage control. The wind made Wolf pull back sharply from her touch, and he lifted an arm in front of his body, fingers curved and rictus stiff. There was a sharpening, almost out of sight, outside conscious thought. Nails turned into claws, tough as iron and sharp as a whisper thin blade. Teeth bared into the wind and her anger, he readied himself on the defense. Then she balled her fists, and the wind died away, and he hesitated, processing the sudden change with some confusion and real anger. “Nothing to be afraid of,” he spat, standing a little straighter, arm slowly falling to his side. “I’m used to witches.” He knew that his own survival would be helped along by not pissing one off. And who would he tell, anyway? “Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, looking down through the treeline. He swiped a hand over his face to wipe snow from his skin and eyelashes after the blast of arctic air, lips still numb and painful. “Telling them wouldn’t change it.” No, she was afraid, and she struggled even to quiet the cold. If there was a way to stop it, she would have used it already. Remorse made her tension slip from her, her hands going slack with shame. How she hated being caught and worse, being out of control. She tucked her errant locks over her ears as she watched him clean the snow from his face. “Come on,” she said quietly, her hands returning back to his arm. This time she didn’t hesitate, both hands coming up to rub both his arms as she steered them down to the cottage. It’s shape grew in the distance as they approached it and she kept close to him. Though the source of the cold, and she certainly kept concentrating as she led him down the mountain, she herself was still warm and every little bit helped as far as she was concerned. His words echoed in her mind and as her palms drew warm lines down his arms, she glanced sidelong at him as they trekked through the snow. “You’re used to witches? How many do you know?” Besides Rose. And Faust. And, well, herself. She rubbed his arms faster as she tried not to dwell on that last one. Denial was a powerful thing. Snow’s quick decision to swoop back in and rub at his arms again, that was a surprise. He’d been sure that accusing her of creating the snowstorm would be enough to make her leave him in the snow, but here she was, walking with him back down the mountain, doing her best to keep him from freezing to death. He was grateful, begrudgingly. It was a shameful thing to be so caught out and so vulnerable to the elements. It was often difficult to believe just how frail his body was in the face of cold, or of physical attack, but there was nothing for it. He needed to get somewhere warmer, or he would die. If he managed to change again some day, he would carry a cloak with him. “I’ve known enough witches,” he said, his voice low. He pulled into himself as much as possible to stay warm, curled in. “I know your sister, with her green touch. I know the man who cursed me. Witches turned the forest to ash and winter to hide themselves. I know what they can do. I know what they will do.” The cottage was growing in size as they approached it, as quickly as they could. It wouldn’t be much longer and thankfully it hadn’t been long since she had left it. A fire would be easy enough to start and warm him, and now that he knew her secret she wouldn’t spend too much concentration on disguising everything. So far her ability to control it was better when she wasn’t preoccupied. She hoped it would stay that when once they were back in the cottage. She was quiet after that, mulling over his choice of words. Oh her sister was painted so neutrally, but Wolf’s opinion of Faust and his magic, or cursing, and how the witches were cowardly and powerful, had that niggling feeling of shame creeping under her skin. She was, after all, doing a lot of hiding herself. “When these lands were cursed,” she said, her words soft against the dying winds as she held him close and rubbed his arms, “was it as bad as this?” She remembered when she had come to the Beast’s castle long ago, watching the ruined forest from the carriage of a sorceress wearing a crown. She couldn’t recall if her own blight was as bad or worse, and wariness and worry dripped from every word. The cold winds bit and scratched like knives, but her hands were warm, a strange thing - the cold started with her, but it did not end there, not properly. “There was cold, like this,” he said, head bowed against the snow as the cottage came closer. He kept one eye on it, always ready for a witch’s trick, to be led astray. “And dead things.” His voice was almost swept away on the air as it swept by, quiet and low. He saw beyond the cottage, to the dead woods on the other side. He could imagine all the creatures out there, scrabbling in the snow, hiding in frozen holes, dying pups sucking on a frozen mother’s dugs. “And sometime it was not cold, but the forest was still dead. Even in summer when there should have been little ones, everything dead, and the ground like ash.” He was not afraid of much, and he would not confess to fear. He glanced over to her, then looked back to the cottage. They were close now. A place like this in his hungry days would have seemed a plump target. Alone in the woods with no neighbors to protect those inside, well fed and warm with their chimney smoking. Like a sugar plum in the snow, ripe and glistening, ready to have its bounty shredded by teeth. “No food. But the scent of corpses faded quick. Birds left, then the hares, foxes, mice. They were small and could make do on scraps.” He skidded a little on the snow, and bared his teeth, catching his hand on the side of the house. “The alpha was dead in two months,” the Wolf said, clambering toward the front with one hand on the wall, sliding along in the frigid cold. And then he said no more, as they were on the threshold of the house, and he had given the witch too much. Witches could always find something to use against you, and he still fumbled with words, usually speaking briefly and in economy. Too many words, too much knowledge, it felt like a liability, and like edging near a yawning precipice, strange and new. Snow remained quiet and contemplative as he spoke, her perfectly thoughtful mask hiding the maelstrom of worry that brewed inside. The picture he painted of the land, and how it wasn’t that unlike what she was doing, made her bite her lip almost nervously, worrying the red with pearly white. He tugged at her attention thoroughly when she heard, and then felt, him skid on the ice, and her arms grasped him tightly to help steady him as he grasped the wall. She wasn’t an overly strong woman, centuries of swordplay only doing so much when she worked behind a desk, but she could hold up Wolf as they stumbled into the cottage. She wouldn’t have to drag him in. Thankfully they made it inside quickly, and she kicked the door behind them closed as she seated him in front of the fire. The cold might be at her command but inside the cottage, Snow was more in her element, and she felt more at ease now that she was a woman with a purpose. “Let me get you a…” she started, finally letting him go once he was inside and rummaging in the back room and grabbing a blanket off the bed. There were more in the loft upstairs but one would suffice for the moment. “Here,” she said hurriedly, unceremoniously wrapping it over his shoulders, tucking it under his chin and making sure he held it tight before moving away. She flitted around him, grabbing a lighter and papers she had tucked away and making quick work in the hearth. Who needed magic when there were modern marvels? With the fire starting to crackle, she finally took a long look at him to see how he was faring now they were out of the storm. Fire and blankets would help but he was still in freezing cold fabric. Her gaze moved from him up to the loft, and she crossed her arms over her chest and ran a thumb over her lip, worrying it redder out of habit. Another blanket would help. “I wonder if Rose has some extra clothes for you.” More layers would help. She would have to check, and perhaps make some tea. Not for the first time she quietly wished, if she had to be cursed with magic, for something more helpful. The Wolf pulled the door tightly shut behind them, glancing around the quiet cottage. Even without a fire, the bitter temperature was nowhere near as cutting once the wind was shut out. When Snow returned with a blanket and tossed it over his shoulders, he shrugged it on a little tighter, both hands gripping and shrouding himself in it. He sat down abruptly on the floor, shoulders hunched and legs pulled in. His shoes had teeth marks in the soles from where he’d carried them in his mouth. He leaned in close to the fire, crackling with light. Fire in the forest was usually something to be feared, and on the coldest nights, while watching humans camped close to the treeline, something to envy. There was no warmth but fur and packmates in the deep cold, and he had been without the latter for a long time now. He pulled the blanket a little tighter, and perhaps, just maybe, muttered thanks, his head bowed close to the flame, though it was almost inaudible. When she asked after the clothes, he nodded, briefly. “She did,” he said. He had seen them, just a few articles, but clean and folded neatly. Returning to the cottage felt strange, stumbling in from the cold this time rather than being herded in bare in the height of summer. So much had changed, and yet so little. He watched Snow to see if she would check the loft. A quiet thought wandered up, and he voiced it, as was often his custom. “...why are you doing this?” She was already on her way up to the loft, one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, when she heard him speak, catching his question as she look at him over her shoulder. Her answer was immediate, confusion dotting her brow. “Why wouldn’t I?” It struck her like Red’s similar question struck her, and she let her shoulders slump a little in relaxation. She was so used to her job in Fabletown, so used to being needed and asked for and yelled for, that it was hard to remember a time when someone didn’t expect her to help. “Because you need help, and because I can,” she said simply as she made her way up to the loft, ignoring the fact that the storm was her fault to begin with. Even if it hadn’t, if it had been just a terribly long winter, she would have still been there, bundling him up by the fire. She found the small pile of clothes quickly and heading back down with the ladder once more, padding up to him with quiet steps and setting it beside him. “Put these on when you’re warm enough to move. The clothes you have on are probably freezing. I’ll make some tea. Are you hungry?” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she made way over to the other side of the cottage. Wolf folded his legs beneath himself, tucking his feet under. He was strangely flexible in ways that normal humans were not, something he’d realized when he saw the stiff way of their walking and moving through the world. He hadn’t thought before about what that could mean, just that he was a wolf and they were not and that must make the difference. Now, tonight, he felt the chilling sensation of doubt. He hadn’t lost it in the woods when he’d run in his own (in his own?) shape again, and he still felt it now, gnawing. “Because,” he said, “Humans don’t run in packs.” That was true, truer than most things to him. Animals knew their place in the world, and wolves knew that only the pack could be trusted. Of course, a member of the pack might still kill you, but there was a decisiveness in it, an ongoing war for dominance and survival that made it only right. Humans banded together, then betrayed each other, killed each other for no real reason he could discern. As he skulked in the trees, he had once seen a man force himself on a young woman, and then bash her head in to keep her silence, tipping her body into a well. In one swoop he took her life, took her from her family, and poisoned everyone who drew water there. That sort of blind cruelty seemed mad, and senseless. You fought and killed for survival, and that was all. Humans were brutal, and not to be trusted. He picked the clothes up and shifted them into his lap. He was still suspicious, but as he warmed up and she puttered around the cabin, it was beginning to morph into a quiet curiosity. “Yes,” he said, apprehensive and pleased by the offer of food, even if it did come from a witch. He never turned down food, never. He was no longer as thin around the ribs as he had been when the warlock found him, but he couldn’t seem to flesh himself out, really, burning through everything much too fast. She supposed she should have expected that kind of answer from a wolf. It made her give him a small huff, somewhere between amusement and annoyance, but that didn’t stop her from rummaging through what she had in her bag. Bread, some cold meats, and cheese, nothing too fancy but she had planned to go hiking up a mountain and hadn’t been expecting company. She could’ve killed for a rare steak at that moment but returning to New York was still a ways away until she could get this snow condition under control. Then there would be a victory dinner. The thought almost made her smile. “There are many who like to stay together. Families, towns, that sort of thing. ,” she started, setting the bread out on the table and clearing away her things. “And even if there are those who stay apart,” say, a certain someone in particular, “that doesn’t mean we want to watch anyone suffer. People aren’t all terrible.” Most of them were, and she had been on occasion, but for the most part, they weren’t all bad. Her words drowned out the sound of her moving about until all her cold food was laid out upon the table. The bread, made days before, surrounded by the rest and a bag of white cheddar popcorn that she snagged from her last quick excursion to her apartment. Some things she just didn’t want to do without if she could help it. Grabbing a small iron pot, she poured cold water into it and made her way back to fire, hanging it up for the flames to warm the contents. Turning back to him, and noticing that he still held the clothes over his lap, she rolled her eyes. “I was married once. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before but go up the loft if you’re shy,” she said with a shake of her head. “Then come to the table and eat.” Wolf had forgotten to even change into the clothes, so preoccupied with staying near the warmth of the fire. He listened to her talk about humans who stuck together, who defended one another like a pack. He did not believe her, but he believed that she believed, and he grunted vague assent. “Maybe.” Maybe some of them did. But he has seen the cruelty of humankind. It was nothing he had ever wanted to be a part of. At her exasperated prompting, he looked up at her, saw the food on the table, and stood. He immediately began peeling off his clothes to get the new, warmer ones on, a black sweatshirt and a long-sleeved blue t-shirt to start, and a pair of jeans made of well worn denim. He had never seen villagers in clothes like these, but he knew Rose brought them from her other home, the one in a place more like the one in the desert outside the hotel. He had an apparent lack of shame that she might see him completely naked, and wordlessly pulled on his new clothes. His bore skin bore a variety of small scars from fights and scuffles with prey over the years. Over his stomach, an ugly knot of pink scar tissue marked the place where the warlock had put his knife. He turned to pick up his clothes. The flickering firelight revealed long tracks across his lower back, slanting down in a slash from the back of his ribs to the edge of one hip. The cuts had been deep at one time, though now they weren’t much more than white tracks depressed across his spine, stretched with years of growing from the day he’d received them. “You didn’t stay with the man you married,” he pointed out, looking at her over his shoulder as he buttoned his pants. The look was knowing. Humans didn’t really mate for life. Not really. They were animals, the same as the creatures that crawled and flew, and they did what pleased them for as long as it pleased. He had finally gotten the hang of buttons and laces recently, but he still sometimes put his shirt on backwards, as he did just at that moment. He was warm, and that was all that mattered. He grasped the bottom of the sweatshirt and pulled it down over his waist. He pulled out a chair at the table, sharply, with a screech of wood on wood, then picked up a slice of bread and began piling cold meat onto it, eyeing the popcorn askance. “Is that food?” She heard the sound of movement and turned her head to the side, catching a flash of skin laced with scars and turning away. A handful of questions arose as to why but she pushed them down, for now, remembering how life could be in the forest, and continued onto the table. She made a soft huff as he reminded her about her marriage. “Not for anything I did,” she reminded him defensively. “Charming had fidelity problems. Finding him with my sister wasn’t exactly something I could forgive him for, or stick around for.” If she pulled the chair out a little harder than intended, she didn’t show any sign of it, and sat in the seat with her back toward him. Once seated, she pulled open the bag of popcorn, munching on a few kernels as she awaited him at the table. “Feeling better?” When he sat down, she eyed his shirt. “It’s backwards,” she pointed out, a wave of her finger gesturing to his shirt though she didn’t sound too broken up about it. If he didn’t care, well, she didn’t either. As for her popcorn, she was just to munch on a few more when he eyed them curiously. “It’s heaven,” she corrected, her lips lifting into the faintest of smiles before turning the open bag in his direction. “Try some.” “Warmer,” Wolf replied, begrudgingly. ‘Better’ seemed strong, but he was warm and there was food, and he knew who he had to thank for that. It didn’t do to become reliant on humans to hand feed you - and yet. He took a large bite of the bread and meat, swallowing before he had barely chewed it. Bread was something he was slowly getting used to. When there wasn’t enough meat to fill him, he found it to be a suitable soft addition, filling the belly and preventing it from crying out with want. He still hadn’t managed to stomach the cooked grass and plants that so many humans cared for. The root ones that grew in the ground were especially baffling. Now, though, he might be able to hunt for himself again, to taste raw meat and blood. He shoved more meat roughly into his mouth. It was a poor substitute, this dead flesh, but it would do for now. He pulled his legs up onto the chair. It was best to keep your body close to itself, in his experience, or something might try to sever the vulnerable parts. Across the table, he watched Snow plucking kernels of the white nuts from the bag. He had never seen their like, and they smelled strange, like milk, caramel-like, and like falsehood. He blinked at her for a moment. It made sense, that she would court a prince, and that he would wed her. Her dark hair had a sheen on it like water, still slick from melted snowflakes and catching the light from the fire. She seemed then a little less like a human or a witch, and more like something else for which he had no name. He reached gingerly into the bag and pulled a kernel out, holding it in the palm of his hand. “What is a changeling?” he asked, abruptly, glancing up at her over the tips of his fingers. His eyes remained as strangely flat and black as ever. It was subtle, but in his tone there was the wavering worry of an unknown quantity. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to that question, but it had chased him now for days and days. Changeling child. What did it mean? Warmer was good. Better, in her opinion, which was precisely what she was going for, and she nodded quietly at his confirmation and munched loudly on her popcorn. She watched him as he peer at the popcorn, she waited oh so patiently until he finally had it in his hand. “It’s for eating,” she teased in a soft whisper, though her smile died as he posed another question. “Changelings?” What an odd thing to think about. “They’re… babies, children, that have been brought to this world in place of human children. Fae, or some other creature sometimes, they look human enough to pass for it, and are left in the hopes some people will come by and raise them as their own.” She munched on another few bits of popcorn. “They grow up, sometimes not knowing that they’re not human, sometimes they do and escape back to where they came from. It really depends.” A beat passed and her head tilted to the side as she looked at him. “Why do you ask?” The Wolf picked up the popcorn kernel and popped it into his mouth. He chewed, and made a face, horrified and disgusted. It was awful! The outside dissolved in a chemical-laced, musty moment of vaguely dairy-like flavors, and the inside was like a pebble. He spat the kernel out, dropping it on the floor. “Humans,” he said, wiping his hands clean. As Snow began speaking of changelings, Wolf got up from the table, walking to one of the cupboards to fish out a cup. So they were replacement children. Not real, human babies, but abandoned fae lookalikes, left to appease parents when their human pups were kidnapped. He had heard that fae liked to raise humans as their own, replacing their own stock with fresh, virile human stock to keep their bloodlines going, but the idea that they would try to fool human parents with a facsimile just long enough that they could spirit the other child away, leaving the changeling to be cast out? It was cruel, as only such creatures could be. He walked to the front door, leaning outside to scoop up a cup full of snow to rinse the taste from his mouth. “I heard someone say it,” he said, distantly, He straightened in the doorway, looking out into the storm. “I heard someone say it to a child.” He looked down at his cup, and he shut the door to the cabin, striding over to the fire. He held the cup close to the hearth, to swiftly melt the snow for drinking. It was a good trick he’d learned, and one of the things that made him begrudgingly grateful for opposable thumbs. “Could it be that a child called a changeling isn’t a changeling at all?” he asked. He was cautious, but still a little outside himself, thinking, staring into the flames. “Could it be the child is called that so the parents aren’t to blame for it?” The idea of that made him angry, and he clutched the cup a little tighter. He hated it and she shouldn’t react the way she did, but his grousing made a soft laugh fall from her lips, a tinkling sound before she pressed pale fingertips to her mouth and smothered the sound. To each their own. “More for me,” she said, warm humor edging her words and lacing through her voice before she munched merrily on another small handful. She grew thoughtfully quiet as he told her about his experience with changelings, or at least the word. She listened to his questions, turning them over in her mind, and wondered, again, just why he was asking them. “Could be. It’s not uncommon for those without magic in their lives to blame problems on something beyond their scope. An illness is easier to blame on a woman who looks like a witch than whatever is actually ailing them. A man who spins stories of fortune can be blamed for ensorceling a farmer instead of examining why the farmer is so gullible. A child who rebels against his parents could be called something otherworldly rather than be dealt with and cared for properly. Changelings exist, but not every child thought to be one is.” Her words were soft, careful and slow, and she couldn’t seem to ease the worry from her brow as she watched him grip the cup, knowing it wasn’t long for the flames to melt the snow. “What child? Who was it? What did those people say?” Her description of the ways in which blame could fall for different, more mundane causes made Wolf uneasy. Something about her words rang true, and made him slip even further into doubt. What had they meant, those things he’d heard? What significance did they have, if any at all? “Just a story,” he said. When the flames at last melted the snow, he took a slow sip of the water. He sat down in front of the fire again, folding his legs. “...a dream I had,” he added, reluctantly. It couldn’t have been real, so where was the harm in asking? Where indeed. “I don’t know exactly,” he said, a little of the harshness coming back into his tone. “It was only a dream. Just snatches, pieces. Things about curses and changelings and what to do when you have one.” He didn’t realize how tense his shoulders had become. “Just a dream,” he muttered. “A dream about leaving a little human child in the woods for fear. Human nature, that is all.” “I wouldn’t say it’s just human,” she corrected, her voice deceptively soft, barely hiding the steel edge in it. “Nature is cruel, with human and not alike. I can admit that we can belie the word; we’re capable of inhuman acts. Whoever would leave a child out in the wilderness like that deserves to have their throats slit. Every last one. But we’re not the only creatures who are cruel.” A thousand memories flash across her mind, making her gaze darken and her lips purse into thin lines. Of things done to her, and of things she had done. Suddenly her popcorn didn’t offer her any enjoyment anymore, and she rubbed her fingers together to wiped them clean. “It’s nature, sure, but that of many. We can all be a little inhuman in the woods.” The words took much of her fair mood from her, not that there was much of one to begin with, and she pushed away from the table with a soft scrape of her chair on the wooden floor. “Another blanket, Wolf?” Wolf stared at Snow when she said that deserting parents should be slit from ear to ear without exception. That was something humans didn’t usually say, but witches must be different. Or maybe it was only Snow who was different, with her rich black hair and thinly set red mouth, radiating ice from every pore. She was different. He didn’t know exactly what to make of a statement like that one. It sounded as if she meant it, and it made him want to dig in her and find the root of it, the meaning. It gave him a hungry curiosity, yawning briefly open before he snapped it shut and looked away. “The woods aren’t human,” he said, agreeing and rephrasing, watching her get up. They would never be human. There would never be anything tame to them, no matter how cultivated they became, or how many witches set up shop and warped them. They would never be anything less than what they were - a place where things became lost. “Yes,” he said, shrugging his shoulders a little closer to himself. The fire was making him drowsy, and he sipped slowly from the cup of cool water, inscrutable. He would need to ask Rose to explain witches to him, and tell him whether it was normal for them to be so strange, between the human and the not, touched with an edge of the wild dark in the deep woods. Without another word she scaled up the ladder, rummaging around on the loft until she found what she was looking for. Another few moments and she was beside him, sliding a heavy blanket onto his shoulders and setting on more beside him on the floor. “Help yourself to the food,” she said as she turned away. “Have all you like. I should be back by nightfall but if not, don’t feel the need to worry. I’ll make it back eventually.” As much as the cold didn’t bother her, she didn’t think she could spend the entire night up on the mountain top. Heading back to the table she took the unfavorable bag of popcorn and tossed it back into her bag as she hefted it over her shoulder. “The fire should last the night so you should be fine. Stay as long as you like.” |