Saturday: 11/3/2007 Night
Who: Fenrir What: He discovers a note When: As the moon begins to rise Where: Starting in his room, ends on the grounds (If someone wants to find him on Sunday, shoot me an IM and we can plot)
Fenrir's first reaction to the note slipped under his door was rage. A flurry of scenarios went through his mind. Maybe it was Heather trying to piss him off again. She had, after all, been rejecting his gifts. Maybe it was Mikhail trying to get under his skin. Maybe it was one of the younger wolves trying to set him off, knowing he was easily set off. Maybe it was one of the students just trying to get under his skin period.
He didn't know, but he didn't find it funny. No, he didn't find anything about the situation funny. And after he'd broken the new table and chairs he'd had brought in to replace the damage done during his fight with Heather, he still didn't find anything funny about the situation. In fact, he hadn't been finding anything good about the whole week in general. After losing his fight with Heather, he had first felt shamed and defeated, and then a strange sensation that he couldn't figure out. But it had driven him to try to make amends with Heather, which also wasn't working. All he knew, was that he wanted to fight her again. But not for vengeance. For some reason he couldn't figure out. It seemed so obvious, but it eluded him.
Whatever it was, he knew at least that Heather topped him. Which did not bode well for him. He was not used to being under anyone but the headmistress, and having a woman, a tiger no less, physically top him had made the week very unsettling for him. He had barely spoken a word outside of what was necessary in his teaching. And that teaching was the only reason he'd been leaving his apartment. No, he had not been doing well at all.
And then this note came along. This note that had that name, that name that no one alive should know. A name he hadn't spoken in eighty years. One name. Just reading that name had brought a flood of emotions into him that he was afraid to face. The first time he had gazed into her eyes when they were pups, and how he had immediately pounced on her, only to have her overcome him and pin him, and how she'd licked his face in glee. Their first hunt together alone, how they'd been able to just know what the other was to do, how they had cornered the deer, taken it down, eaten and then slept together in the full moon light. How she had looked when he handed her their first-
No! With tears in his eyes he shook his head as he began stomping towards the door, ready to run as soon as he could get out of these damned walls. He wasn't going to face what he'd lost again. He had spent so many years avoiding it, he wasn't going to face it just because someone scribbled a note and said it was from her. He rushed through the halls, almost to the point of running, doing his best to mask the weakness that was ready to burst if he couldn't distract himself from what he knew he couldn't avoid.
Finally he was out of the doors, and he wasted no time shifting, not caring what happened to the clothes he was wearing. Soon he was in wolf form and he sprinted into the woods, not resting until he was surrounded by the trees and sure no one was around. Only then did he finally stop fighting it. Only then did he let out the emotion he had held in for so long.
She was right and he knew it. He had been acting a fool for so long he'd forgotten what he used to be, before everything had been taken from him. Sure, things used to be done differently, but not as brutish as he made it out to be. Yes, he had been raised rougher then the humans, but it wasn't a loveless existence where only power spoke. He had once shown kindness and known how to smile. He had once known love.
Even as a wolf, tears spilled form his eyes, dampening his gray pelt as he thought of her, in human form this time, as she stroked his sides for comfort. He had been so nervous that day, so unsure and frightened. The mothers all told him to cease his worrying, and the fathers all understood his anxiety and had let him pace, right up until she had called out for him. Even as she screamed she had never shown fear in her eyes, had never shown any sign of weakness, despite the pain she must have gone through. And then, it had been over and she had hugged him and cried, and he had cried with her. And he had cleaned their child and she held their son and-
He lifted his head to the moon and let out a heart wrenching howl that echoed through the empty night. He called out for everything he had lost, over and over again, losing himself in his cries. His cries to Luna. His moon. He cried until the sun rose, and only then did he let himself collapse in exhaustion on the ground, to sleep.
---
He stood naked in the woods. It was not the nakedness that surprised him, it was the woods. He knew these woods, knew them better then any place he had ever been. These had been their wolves, his packs woods. These had been his woods, so long ago. He wandered, dumbfounded, oblivious to the fact that he should be in these woods. He couldn't help it, they were just as he'd left them. He could even smell-
He was on the ground before he could react, a large white object having bowled him over. He rolled with the mass, twisting as he went down so that when he struck the ground, he rolled and wound up pinning the object that had slammed into him. Fist raised above him, he was about to unleash a beating on the object but as he brought his hand to strike, he stopped himself before he made a terrible mistake. It was her.
She did not look surprised by the fury that had been on his face, or even the violence he had almost unleashed upon her. In fact, the only thing she looked was sad, as her amber eyes stared into his own. As he felt his strength leave him, he pulled himself off of her and slowly backed away on hands and knees, head held low in shame. She, following him, ignored his shame and nustled her muzzle into the crook of his neck, and softly licked there. As if to say, I'm sorry.
He lifted his head and found that he too was now in wolf form, which was strange since he did not remember shifting. It was then he realized what this was. Opening his mouth, he spoke but a voice did not come from him, it drifted through the wind like storm winds.
"This is a dream, isn't it?"
She nodded and licked his face with a wolfish smile. He did not know how she could be happy if she were dead. He felt that surely she should be angry, or worse. But she was so peaceful. Still the same Luna he had always loved. Tears again came to his eyes as he nustled his own nose into her fur, taking in her scent, relishing every touch, almost unable to stand so great was his joy and his sorrow.
"Luna, I'm so sorry I failed you. Failed everyone. Failed our-"
She jerked her head and struck him strongly on his side, forcing him to stop talking. Then her own voice floated over the wind, like a spring breeze through a field of flowers.
"You were not to blame. No one was. It is just what was meant to be. You know this, as we all knew this. Our passing was no different then the deer we hunt for sustenance. It is simply what had to be."
Fenrir shook his head as he backed away, not wanting to believe her. He couldn't believe her. The deer they hunted provided a purpose with their death. But their death had been meaningless. Nothing had been gained from it.
"No, what they did was not hunting it was slaughter. How can you say it was meant to be? It is their fault, they-"
Now she was angry, and she snapped at him, catching his neck in her mouth and jerking him forcibly to the ground, clenching just enough to let him know she could snap her neck and tear his jugular out before he could even react. And yet still she could talk.
"Enough of your hatred! The wolf I loved was nothing like what you are now. You have let yourself be destroyed by what cannot be changed! The humans who killed us are long dead, by your hand. And yet still your vengeance was not served, you had to hate all humans, and even come to hate your own kind!"
He whined but she held strong, not releasing him just because she was hurting him.
"But, the humans are-"
She jerked, cutting him slightly, just enough for a drop of blood to fall to the forest ground below them.
"But what? Have you forgotten that you too are human?"
"No I-"
"You what? Are superior to them because you know both worlds?"
"That's not it, I just-"
"Just can't understand why they hate what they are? Do you forget your own past so easily? I remember your father used to have to force you to practice your shifting, because you loved your hands and wished to grab everything with them. Or the first time we shifted, have you forgotten how tightly we had to hold each other, so scared were we of the moon? And we were raised among our kind. And yet you wonder why humans, who have no idea of our ways fear the change so much?"
She let up her grip on Fenrir's and let him stand, leaning close and licking the wound she had inflicted on him.
"Fenrir, you were once an Alpha. Once my Alpha. And even if your father held the title, we all knew that you led us, even as young as you were. But we did not follow you because you were powerful, I did not love you because you were powerful. I loved you because you cared about all of us, every last member of our pack. I remember the gleam in your eye when you would break up the pups from fighting too hard, only to wink at them and let them attack you instead. Don't tell me you have forgotten our son so easily?"
He shook his head in answer, not wanting her to see the tears in his eyes as he remember. He had never forgotten him, and still woke up from time to time in cold sweats after nightmares where he watched every agonizing second as the poison took hold.
"No I, I still miss him. I still miss you. Oh I miss them all. Every day I wake up and wonder why I still live when you are all gone? You say there was a purpose to it, but how can you tell me that when I am the one who is left alone?"
She nuzzled him gently and he nuzzled her pack, closing his eyes and holding the semi-embrace as long as he could.
"Fenrir, we never left you. You ignored us in your quest to find meaning in it all, but we were always watching over you. All you had to do was remember. As we will continue to look over you until you come to join us on the other side. But you must not be held back from living just because we are gone. We will always love you, you know that. You must make yourself happy though. You must find a way to remember us without losing what you once were."
As she spoke these last words, she stepped away and turned, gazing out into the brush as if looking for something. Fenrir followed her gaze, trying to see what she saw, but could see nothing in the fallen leaves. Then he felt a small thud in his side and he turned, only to burst into tears again as he saw an almost pure white coat with the faintest of gray tracing lines down the sides of his son. He almost didn't know how to react, wanting to simultaneously nuzzle him, pick him up in human form, or play with him.
But even as he contemplated in shock, his son came around and was suddenly no longer a child but an adult wolf, who came up and rubbed his muzzle in Fenrir's neck, as if to show that he no longer needed to be worried about. Fenrir had so much to say that he didn't know where to begin, and then suddenly-
He was awake. He sat up and looked around, still in wolf form, in the place he had collapsed in exhaustion. It had all been a dream. And yet, there were paw prints all around, and the leaves were disturbed as if someone had been wrestling in them. And yet, he smelled no scent in the air...