[Wild Roses] Hernén
Title: moving beneath winter-bare branches
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Hernén
Prompt: 54A "darkness falls"
Word Count: 512
Rating: all ages
Notes: His first winter in the Trickwood (before it could be properly called 'the Trickwood', singular).
Wolves howled. It was a fact of existence, especially out beneath trees so old and gnarled with their age that the fall of one to storm was like as not to take its nearest neighbours with it, ripping a hole in the canopy large enough to see the stars by. He saw more struck to snags by lightning than fallen, the trunks even this late in the year tied up tightly by clinging vines.
The werewolves called it singing, in the sense of singing celebration in success, or to strike fear into the hearts of their opposition.
It was, he thought, still more than a little disconcerting, distressing, possibly other words prefixed with 'dis', to see human words coming from the fanged jaws of four-legged predators. He'd caught edges of the chorus one of Ruadhan's new-made drinking songs going around the pack earlier in the week, then again, clearer, today, heard a few of the only-humans behind and beside him on the narrow trails humming along. The members of the pack--packs? He wasn't sure anymore, and hadn't caught one he knew well enough to ask yet today--on two legs had sung low harmony to their four-legged companions' main line and descants as the whole group fanned far out to the sides of the narrow trail he and the other only-humans followed, glimpsed occasionally through the bare-branched sections of cover.
They were eerily silent otherwise, and he'd begun to catch himself reacting more to a prickle of watching silence than to spotting movement from the corner of his eye. Belladonna always grinned sharply at him when their eyes met, her lips just barely short of the canines-exposed snarl of challenge. He wondered, idly, again, whether she actually ever gave voice to the edge of fierce laughter that lurked on her face, along the curve of her mouth in human guise and in the cant of her head in lupine.
They made camp as night began to fall, wards strung out far from the giant-fallen clearing they settled at the edges of, and tight-wound torches placed nearer in to them, as far away from dry leaves hiding beneath early-winter rain soaked branches.
The wolves were casting slightly nervous glances at the sky, never more than four of the pack with heads raised in the complicated whirl of bodies blurring between brindled fur and rough-woven fabric, slightly shaggy and unkempt no matter their shape.
"Worried about dragons?" he asked as one slipped through the dusk near him on four feet, gray-backed with pale cheeks and underbelly, a tan stripe running up the muzzle to meet the gray atop its head. Not one he knew, yet, but likely one he should.
Black rimmed yellow eyes lifted to consider him, then shrugged, a human gesture in a body not meant for it, and replied "Watching for the sunset," in an alto voice.
He blinked, then nodded. "Thank you."
The she-wolf nodded back gravely, then trotted away into the deepening dark, her back blending with the shadows torches cast until she was near-invisible movement, then gone.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Hernén
Prompt: 54A "darkness falls"
Word Count: 512
Rating: all ages
Notes: His first winter in the Trickwood (before it could be properly called 'the Trickwood', singular).
Wolves howled. It was a fact of existence, especially out beneath trees so old and gnarled with their age that the fall of one to storm was like as not to take its nearest neighbours with it, ripping a hole in the canopy large enough to see the stars by. He saw more struck to snags by lightning than fallen, the trunks even this late in the year tied up tightly by clinging vines.
The werewolves called it singing, in the sense of singing celebration in success, or to strike fear into the hearts of their opposition.
It was, he thought, still more than a little disconcerting, distressing, possibly other words prefixed with 'dis', to see human words coming from the fanged jaws of four-legged predators. He'd caught edges of the chorus one of Ruadhan's new-made drinking songs going around the pack earlier in the week, then again, clearer, today, heard a few of the only-humans behind and beside him on the narrow trails humming along. The members of the pack--packs? He wasn't sure anymore, and hadn't caught one he knew well enough to ask yet today--on two legs had sung low harmony to their four-legged companions' main line and descants as the whole group fanned far out to the sides of the narrow trail he and the other only-humans followed, glimpsed occasionally through the bare-branched sections of cover.
They were eerily silent otherwise, and he'd begun to catch himself reacting more to a prickle of watching silence than to spotting movement from the corner of his eye. Belladonna always grinned sharply at him when their eyes met, her lips just barely short of the canines-exposed snarl of challenge. He wondered, idly, again, whether she actually ever gave voice to the edge of fierce laughter that lurked on her face, along the curve of her mouth in human guise and in the cant of her head in lupine.
They made camp as night began to fall, wards strung out far from the giant-fallen clearing they settled at the edges of, and tight-wound torches placed nearer in to them, as far away from dry leaves hiding beneath early-winter rain soaked branches.
The wolves were casting slightly nervous glances at the sky, never more than four of the pack with heads raised in the complicated whirl of bodies blurring between brindled fur and rough-woven fabric, slightly shaggy and unkempt no matter their shape.
"Worried about dragons?" he asked as one slipped through the dusk near him on four feet, gray-backed with pale cheeks and underbelly, a tan stripe running up the muzzle to meet the gray atop its head. Not one he knew, yet, but likely one he should.
Black rimmed yellow eyes lifted to consider him, then shrugged, a human gesture in a body not meant for it, and replied "Watching for the sunset," in an alto voice.
He blinked, then nodded. "Thank you."
The she-wolf nodded back gravely, then trotted away into the deepening dark, her back blending with the shadows torches cast until she was near-invisible movement, then gone.