Running With Wolves

[Amerist]

Inspiration. Fangs. The fire of the blood as wind rushes past. The taste of the kill. These are the things that a wolf asks for out of life. The howl of a full, new moon baying for a lover long lost into dreamless death. Facing we fly. Dying we live. Fighting we are.

The World is born in the howl of a Wolf.

With a lumbering lupine grace a single figure made its way from the darkness and detached from the frothing shadows that belonged to the undergrowth of the forest and jungle beyond. Long trailing bits of clothing waving back as it silently glided like an animal through the moonlight. The same beams shining on and revealing the pelt of a wolf, seamlessly folded together like the creature itself and towards the great head and maw covering the figure’s head like a hood. A large tail trailing behind, being lead on a madcap chase towards a destination unknown.

The shrill cry of a day-bird, awoken from her sleep on the ground, fluttering wings and fearful whispers breach in its passing. Then silence.

The Enemy. He is not of us but comes amongst us as if he might pay tribute to Wolf, but he is not one of us.

A single man by the fireside. His eyes old and wary of the night around him. Watching as even the light of the fire flickers in his living eyes. A pair of far more feral, hunter’s eyes watched him from the distance, their bearing dark and considering. He remained unawares of his surroundings, despite the many notches on his leather satchel and hunting knife at his side that spoke of great experience in the wilds. The wrinkles around his aging eyes only accentuated from time to time in the faltering firelight.

Do not presume arrogance, Hunter. My growl is not the warning that you suspect it to be.

The nostrils of the man flared for a moment and he looked up from tending the fire. Aware. Someone else was out there with him. Watching. Almost as if he could smell his death near, prowling. Waiting. His hands remaining away from the knife at his belt but his eyes, keen from years of war peer into the darkness beyond. His lips pull together in a silent kiss to the world, an unconscious pressing of the lips together when concentrating. The final kiss of a warrior prepared for his Fate.

The wolf-clothed figure in the darkness moved through the dark thicket brush carrying with itself a regal and deathly countenance. Slipping between the shadows and the light cast by the fire in its slow vigil. The man’s eyes searched the darkness relentlessly for what he felt, but he saw naught but shadows; still he was unconvinced for the feeling in his gut.

Interloper. Have you come here to steal away our lands, to take our people from us, have you come seeking immortality amongst us? Do you know the price of intrusion ...ignorance is not innocence in guise unfathomed. We know you. For once we were you.

The man coughed and rose finally, drawing the knife from his belt and making his back to the roaring fire, hoping that its light would reveal his dark foe. That it would burn away the threads imagination bourne that were tricking him into seeing movement in the shadows that was not there. To him, perhaps, a quail out at night? Rabbit? Doe? ...it could be the brush of the wind on his back, gift of the mind unspent before sleep. The stench of hatred rose from the very loam earth upon which he stood.

“Come and face me, coward.” The man growled to the darkness beyond, attempting to name his unseen tormentor. Give it shape and form in his mind that he might better grapple with it.

Still the other did not speak.

“Have you come for me? Finally,” he queried, turning round the circle, his legs carrying him about the fire, his back always facing the inferno. “So long have I sought you and now you come to me ... and yet you will not show yourself to me.”

The wolf-figure paused a moment, eyes peering from before him, directly at him, through him. Yet he could not see. He could not see his Death watching him from a distance. Eyes inhuman, a single slit down the center breaking a gleaming green, underneath the toothy maw of a wolf worn as a hood.

“I have killed many of your kind,” he admitted flippantly. “Do you think that you shall be any different, in my eyes, in theirs? Consider this. If you attack me you may defeat me. True, but you might lose and I’ll merely add another notch to my blade.” The instrument in question gleamed in the firelight, fifteen and twenty scrapes along its surface gleaming darkly. “So, if you think you have the mettle, take me...”

A Warrior’s mettle is of her slayings not... but the trueness of her heart.

“I am ready for you! Menace.”

With a savage roar the darkness behind him, beyond the fire, exploded with fury. A great furred form leapt from them and over the fire itself as he, startled, turned to see his foe for the first time. For the last time.

Her eyes shone in his head. A pair of glimmering emerald jewels; the apex of life and beauty as they shone in her exotic face. Her skin smooth like a forgotten goddess and shining in the firelight, covered partially with a costume of wolf’s pelt, barely enough to keep the cold from her body, but enough to show the sleek and perfect muscle of her form. He cried out as she struck him, the cold eyes of her hood; the head of a wolf resting like a watchful predator companion upon her own. Her own knives struck into his body and stole his lifeblood for him as he felt himself, with her, falling. A perverse lover’s embrace as they hit the ground together.

He, too weak to move, watched her rise from his dying form and wipe her blades on his shirt. Then turn and coldly walk away as the last vestiges of his conscious mind fled from his broken, dying flesh...

A howl broke the night, sad and serene.

We do what we must because we are Wolf. Do not lament the passing of the outsiders because they do not understand. But we will forever cry for our people who have fallen to them, shed tears of joy with every triumph, and then forget them.

Fangs. The fire of the blood. Inspiration. These are the things a wolf asks for from life.