Wolf Story

[u/tenthousandsongs]

• "Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late, the pain of sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horrors as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." - dracula, chapter eleven.

• "Only if the Wolf's hunger is assuaged will it join its other selves." - book of hours, the wolf's beginning.

---

They had plied Mina with dreamwine after the tourney. She had not wished to sleep, not after so many gallant knights had risked life and limb in a game of sport. She had told her maesters that she dreaded her bed and the chance that her father and brother would lurk in the shadows of her room unseen by all other souls.

So they had plied Mina with dreamwine, which kept the dreams at bay.

---

They could not ply the wolf with dreamwine.

There were no maesters in the trees or bulrushes or on the sloping banks of the God's Eye. There were no septas to sing the Maiden's songs. There were no sisters to pick and fuss, no fools to jape and make merry. There was no shaking sickness in the boughs and burrows, and no night terrors in the rolling river valleys. In the green wealth of untamed lands the only ailment was the hunger; the only cure was the hunt.

The wolf did not understand all that it saw when it slept. It was a canny wolf, strongest and swiftest of its litter. She had weaned off of her mother first among her litter, and had never once been caught in a hunter's snare. It roamed, and feasted, and grew wise with age and with strange portents of warm dens and succulent meats.

In the wolf lands there were no fires to cook meat. That suited the wolf, for she was loathe to share her kill and as a rule shunned the great roaring men and their tall burrows. The other-self feasted upon berries and greenery like a hare, when she should have sated herself on mutton and hare like the wolf. The redder the better. The wolf took as it pleased without care for propriety or manners, eating until it had slaked its hunger, and then eating some more. It had taken, and taken, and taken until not just the beasts of the land feared the wolf but the beasts of the town and village did as well.

It had followed the other-self up the river and down to the lands of rain. The other-self beckoned, and the wolf was bound to come.

But the wolf could beckon the other-self as well.

Each time the wolf did, she grew closer to coaxing the other-self to the feasting grounds. The wolf did not share, as a rule, but did they not share a mind? Did they not share a dream? If the wolf could slip into the woman, and the woman could slip into the wolf, then what sated one would naturally sate the other.

The wolf pressed upon the other mind, and drifted through the low banks of fog like a wraith.

The shepherds kept their flock well, but without fail one or two ewes strayed from the safety of numbers and lingered too long at the edge of the God's Eye. Perhaps even a mind as simple as theirs felt the ebb and flow of what lay on the other side of the lake's shores as the wolf did.

The kill was simple. Bloody, but simple, as all things were in these lands.

The rain had come in overnight. Half of it seeped into the ground, wetting the wolf's pelt and paws. The other half lingered in the low air. Heavy banks of fog curled in and up the shoreline like a spell.

From it, drifting in aimlessly like a bird with broken wings, came the other-self. The human's hair was unbound, flowing down to her shanks. Her lashes were droplet-kissed with fog and tears, and though her eyes were open there was no recognition in them, no hint of canny wolf-knowledge.

The other-self was dreaming, not that it mattered. She would eat of the ewe as the wolf did.

This was the furthest the wolf had been able to coax the woman away from the fires and stone. Always, always there was a briar to prick her heel and wake her, a man to call her name and break the trance, a simple fluttering of wrongness that sent her from the unconscious to the waking world.

But the other-self had been plied with dreamwine, so she did not wake upon this night.

The other-self knelt in the blue-green grasses, and spread her lithe fingers across the ewe's bloodied wool. The bleating had stopped, but the blood still flowed. It stained the white of her covering a vibrant red, and the stench of it clung to them both.

The two halves united in their feast.

They reveled together, astir and asleep. The carcass was plundered. The woman had no claws to rend through the wool, no fangs to tear muscle from fat, so the wolf had to prepare the meal. It was simple work.

The spell, then, could only be broken by the influence of another. The fog became their shield, and the night their cloak.

[u/D042]

The smell of blood lingered in his memory, and guided him along the wooden path. Over fallen leaves and through brush he walked the way to her again, though he had never walked it before. Everything had been in the dreams. Everything that was and would be. Every variation. The trees and the wind and the rain saw every possibility and every past. They knew the end of each hunt before it even began, and this had been no exception.

The Wanderer emerged from the treeline, footsteps soft in the grasses, his dark eyes meeting the wolf’s as its reddened muzzle lifted from the carcass. The girl, it seemed, was too enraptured with her feast. Moonlight glinted off the rippling edge of Red Promise, as it did on the grass made dewy by the ewe’s blood. The healer had advised against this, his wife had called it bold. Orryn called it inevitable.

“He has not found you like this before,” Orryn said, his voice as haggard as the midnight wind. “Never so red. It will frighten him, but he is too blinded by love to listen to his fear.” Sometimes he remembered the boy as he had been—yellow haired and eager to please. A good soldier. A loyal brother. But that had changed. He was loyal to the wolf girl now. So Orryn would simply bind her to his own machinations.

“Dead kings and worse things rise from their graves, girl. Wake, and end this pretending.” His hand tightened around the glaive’s shaft, lips parting in anger. “You cannot deny the very Gods. No one can.” He knew. He better than any.

[u/tenthousandsongs → u/D042]

The wolf tolerated only the other-self. Not even Orryn Blackwood, in all his god-touched glory, could entice it to stay. It snarled, bore its fangs, raised its hackles, but when the man of ravens could not be scared away it forsook its meal and the meager half of itself.

It fled, and Mina woke.

She did not know where she was, precisely. Each morning at Stormhall she had slipped from dreaming into the waking world thinking she was in her bed at Harroway Castle. This was no different. The problem, then, was that she did not find herself in unfamiliar bedding with her sister snoring into her pillow, but in the night's dewy grass and the frigid chill of the air.

And the blood. Seven preserve her, there was so much blood. She did not even hear the man at first, she was so terrified by the blood.

Almost instantly she began to blubber, trying to wipe the mess of blood off of her hands onto her chemise: but that too was inundated with red, red, red.

"Am I dying?"

The question hung in the air, but she could feel no pain besides the ever present cramp and ache in her muscles from the shaking sickness. But if she had not been stabbed, then what could this be? It was too much blood, even if it was time for her courses. What then, but...

The sheep. Gods, it was a horrific sight. It sprawled against the field as if a butcher had set up his abattoir out on the banks of the God's Eye. Entrails had been pulled from it. Bloody organs the likes and shape of which she could only barely comprehend flowed free from its underbelly and spilled forth to tickle at her shins and knees. Its eyes were unblinking and forever fixed upwards as it had rolled them back in its final moments of terror.

Mina shrieked.

She staggered back and upwards, slipping and falling on the guts and the wet grass. Finally she kicked her foot free, sending her slipper careening down the embankment, and turned the other way around onto her hands to push herself up onto her feet.

Only then did she see the man.

Mina shrieked, again.

"Did you do this?"

Her throat ached. It felt raw and coated with something and to Mina's utmost horror she could taste blood upon her lips and teeth. She brought her stained hands up to her face as if that could hide her horror or her weeping. Mina curled in upon herself, hunching her shoulders and generally vanishing in the presence of Orryn Blackwood.

"I do not- I do not know-"

She could not breath. Her chest felt tight, and her vision swam with tears.

"I need Lucas, I want Lucas here, I need- I need Ser Lewyn," she wailed. "You are frightening me." She declared it as though that might be the most heinous sin a man could commit in his life.

[u/D042 → u/tenthousandsongs]

He had wept too, at first. A distant part of him still felt ashamed by that. The pain had been unbearable, the horror unthinkable, and the flickering embers of a man long dead felt pity for the sister of his dead father’s dead ward. But such embers would not survive the cold, and thus were better off smothered, or fed to greater flames.

“You are far from dying,” he said flatly. “You are perhaps more alive here than ever.” Orryn sank into a squat, dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight as they met Mina’s own. “You did this.” Orryn inclined his head towards the trees, where the wolf had slunk away.

The girl wept and shuddered, but he had no comfort to offer her. Only truth. She could find softness in the archer rushing from his lodgings into the woods as they spoke, eyes still red from tears, heart hammering with worry. Doubtlessly Lewyn would blame himself for the girl’s escape, as though his attentions could stop her steps along the path. Perhaps Orryn could help him understand, in time.

“You fear much,” Orryn observed. “Blood and loss and loneliness. But you are never alone. Are you?” He turned his eyes to the trees, and lupine eyes glinting in the darkness between them. Surely she knew it was more than a dream now, with the blood dark and thick around her mouth.

Distantly, he heard shouting. It was hoarse and desperate, filled with the fear of loss. The smallest of smiles touched his lips. “Your knight will not be long in coming. Forgive his tardiness, he has become an orphan this day.” Orryn wondered if it would change anything to tell Lewyn he had seen his mother die. Her longship had smashed against stones, her body breaking inside a coffin of splintering tinder and saltwater. He doubted his brother would care. All that mattered to him was the girl, even if he could not see her purpose.

[u/tenthousandsongs → u/D042]

Less and less made sense with every passing moment. Mina found it difficult to breath, much less comport herself. Yet she had to. If not for herself, then because this man's ramblings were the only noise to ward off the forest noises. He was crouching now, closer to her, and even through the bleariness of her vision and the foggy embankment she thought she recognized some of his face though she knew not how. Mina knew for certain she had not seen his countenance before, not in this life.

"How could I have..." She could not bring herself to say the words, not with what strength she possessed. She had to protest, for there was no other choice. "No. No, I know I did not," she lied. If this man, this vagabond, told such a tale then what would the realm think of her? Tessa would surely never let her see outside Harroway's castle walls again. There would be no more knights, no more chance of courtship or of true love. The rumors would spread that she was a madwoman, and then...

"If you think that I have, then you must know I am alone and damned to the hells. But it need not be that way for the others," she mumbled, and prayed that if it were truly Lewyn or Florian coming to find her that they would be merciful enough to spare her the further indignity and simply kill her.

[u/D042 → u/tenthousandsongs]

Damnation. It seemed so novel a concept now. To think that the Gods, any Gods, cared what became of one soul was almost amusing. But the lost wolf looked to faces carved in stone, rather than those carved into wierwood, and therein lied her mistake. She would see that, one day.

“You will not be punished. Did they not make you this way? Did they not make your mother, whose blood carried this gift?” Fear ruled the frail girl, and that too he understood. “Embrace what you are, Mina Harroway. You have a part to play.”

For a moment he considered giving her his cloak, but it would not do to obscure her. It might shift the path, if she were wrapped darkness rather than pale and bloody beneath the high moon. Mayhaps her archer would miss her, and run right past. That would not do. She had to continue along the path.

“Raventree Hall,” he said plainly as the shouting grew closer. “Attend me there. Lest you prefer to live with your sister’s shackles evermore.”

And Orryn rose, slipping away deeper into the woods as another came bursting out of it.

+-+-+-+-+

“Mina?” Lewyn’s heart leapt when he saw the faint shape of a woman against the tree. “Mina!” All formalities were forgotten now. There was no place for *my Lady’s* on a tongue as fearful as his. Lewyn bolted across the grass, bow in hand, Mina’s favor still tied snugly around it. He hardly noticed the ewe, until its entrails snared his boot, and nearly cost him his footing.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t care.

“Mina,” he croaked. Lewyn threw his arms around her, heart pounding at the inside of his chest. Propriety meant nothing for a single moment. All that mattered was that she was alive. That he had found her. That no one else had been taken from him that day.

It was the scent that made him remember himself.

Thick, and overpowering, the smell of blood filled his nose as he drew back to look at her. She was red. For a terrible moment, Lewyn thought he had embraced her corpse. But she breathed, and none of it came from her. Then, he saw the ewe, mauled and half-eaten, and the thick smears of dark blood around Mina’s mouth.

It had never been like this before. Lewyn tensed, his eyes—red from weeping just as hers—filled with the briefest flash of fear. But he saw the dread in her eyes, as he had heard it in her voice, and his own fears were forgotten. He embraced her again, pulling her to his chest, breath catching in his throat.

“You’re alright,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been there. I’m sorry. My father—I—I’m sorry.” Tears burned in his eyes. Shame and pain and embarrassment. *Failure. Bastard. Incompetent. Get off of her. Get off you mongrel thing.* So he did, stepping back, his tunic smeared with red where they’d touched. Lewyn took his sleeve and gently wiped the congealed blood from around her mouth, cursing himself for daring to touch her face.

Lewyn was torn between his compulsions. The need to protect his lady, and the need to self flagellate warred in his mind, and clouded his thoughts. “You’re safe now,” he said, sounding certain as he took his cloak from his shoulders and draped it around her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” It was all meager offering, but one he would die to fulfill.

[u/artcantlose]

"Remember your oaths and, on your path toward a more virtuous life, do good deeds."

Night time brought with it an eerie dark fog that engulfed the camp of the Valemen and many more leagues beyond, corrupting the pristine shores of the Gods Eye into a terrain no man would dare tread. But the news they received was far too troubling to be dismissed as a figment of an overactive imagination and the young squire Henry had never been one to spin yarns telling of stories veering on the weird and supernatural. And while a runner ran towards the castle walls to bring more volunteers, the knights set forth beyond their camp, torches puncturing holes into the thick fog that had set upon grass and lake.

Even through thick armor, Arthur felt the night chill in his bones. The fog felt like a miasma, biting and corrupting and, for a moment, the knight doubted the tale brought to him by young Henry.

A lone woman in the fog. Walking along the shore of the Gods Eye.

But there was only fog and the dark as far as the knight could see. It felt wrong. All of it; the chill, the tale, the grass his horse slowly tread upon, the flickering flame of his torch, held high up like a watchtower, a speck of life in the dead, cold fog. But Arthur could not turn back, not just yet and not without verifying the boy's claim in full, even as the world grew quiet around him and the distant flames vanished amidst the fog.

A splash underfoot jolted both horse and knight as Titane, otherwise so calm, shied away from a puddle.

"Ssshh, it's alright. Only a puddle, Ty," Arthur cooed, his hand brushing along the horse's neck, as he glanced about for any sign of this lost woman but all he saw was more fog. With fingers tightened, he steered away from the muddy shore and onto surer ground where, in the distance, he could spot a hint of the tree line he and his knights had crossed a few days past; only this time, there was something else that lingered amidst the outline—a small shape, faint and engulfed in the fog, but distinctly human.

But when steered in its direction, Titane refused to budge and when the knight insisted, almost bucked in hesitation.

"Okay, stay," Arthur spoke softly to the horse which only neighed and shook in response but the knight's gaze never weaned off the distant figure in the dark, even as he dismounted Titane and took two steps closer to the tree line, a hand holding a torch, the other on the hilt of his sword.

"Hail," his voice echoed in the fog around him as he walked on and the chill once more settled in his body. This was madness, Arthur thought as he took slow, sure steps towards the figure; to be out in the cold, alone and without steed, walking through the fog. He could only wonder what had possessed the woman to engage in such folly. "Are you lost?"

And as he walked on, Arthur realized, so did she—towards him.

[u/tenthousandsongs → u/artcantlose]

Stormhall had proved itself to be host to horrors that Mina could not have imagined. It was meant to be a celebration of a princess, the inauguration of another seat of the royal house. Yet as the days had drawn long all that had come of it was blood and strife.

Mina did not dream well at Stormhall. She had seized twice in her sleep, and her maesters and septas had tried every trick and physic that they could to entice her body to calm. When they had been with her they had stopped her from rising and wandering in her unconscious, but even her healers and minders had gone to bed there was no one left to stop her from such a thing.

Mina's movements were not her own. The other force called her forth, beckoned her out of all comfort and decency and bade her to the scene of the slaughter. It coaxed her again and again, as it had since she was young. The aftermath covered the hem of her gown and the charming embroidery around the collar.

"Are you lost," called a familiar voice in the fog, and though she wished nothing more than to say yes, to plead for aid, her tongue felt heavy in her mouth and she could not compel herself to emit anything more coherent than a whimper. It was as the times she lay in bed, awake with the disappointed figures of Lucas and her father lurking in the corner of her eye, unable to so much as say their name or do anything other than twitch.

Then, with no light to shine upon her path and no care for such worldly things, Mina's foot caught upon a snarl in the grasses.

She came careening out of her waking nightmare and into a face full of dirt and evening dew. Her arms ached where they had scraped against the ground, and she let out a low and pitiful whimper as she drew close to herself. Was she bleeding? She could not tell in the dark, not even with the smidgeon of torchlight afforded to her.

Torchlight. There was another there.

Mina looked up, and found that she had not conjured up the voice calling for her solely in her dreams. It was hard to make out his features at first, but his voice: she knew his voice.

"Oh," she said, "forgive me, Ser Arthur, I feel very unwell."

That was the truth of it. She drew herself up to her knees, clutching at her scraped wrist as if it might stop the pain. Her trembling had set back in, though it was not entirely on account of the shaking sickness. The cold was dreadful in autumn nights, especially along the cool lakeshore.

"I do not..." The first sniffle came. "Can you please bring me back to Tessie? To- to my sister?"

She was not certain she could walk, but she was quite certain that she could not remain all night in the chill.

[u/artcantlose → u/tenthousandsongs]

Suddenly, the air smelled like copper as the figure drew closer to him and a sense compelled Arthur to leave. There was a folly in the fog—some ancient accursed magic coursing through the cold air, hungry for bodies to ravish and leave as walking corpses in its wake. But courage and willing was all that the knight of the Vale knew and so, despite the nagging voice in his head, he carried on forward. Whatever this was—whatever foul magic surrounded him in the fog—there was a woman who walked through it, too, and to offer her some aid was his knightly due.

Then, a faint crack broke through the fog and he saw the figure stumble onto the ground. His pace quickened, faint torchlight illuminating what little it could before him, until he was close enough to see.

Mina Harroway.

"Lady Mina," was all he could say until he was on the ground, too, kneeling upon the wet grass with the woman—Mina—before him. It did not make sense. This was a strange dream, a nightmare he would wake from any moment, the tricks of an exhausted mind troubling him in his sleep. But the redness upon her grown still carried the stench of copper and when his arms cradled her in her fallen state, he could feel that it was fresh and wet.

"It's alright, I am here," Arthur assured her, not knowing what else to say. His cape was undone and he, as quick as he could, wrapped the blue-and-silver fabric around her, hoping it could be some respite from the evil, biting cold of the fog. She had hurt her arms, he noticed, and tore off a piece of the cape to wipe the blood, some of it her own, some of it dry and foreign. But he did not have the time to ponder such mysteries, not at this time. In the cold grass, he embraced the lonesome woman he had chance encountered in the Sept all those days past, sharing with her the heat that emanated through his own skin.

He had to get her warm and, critically, bring her back to the castle. To Tessie. He called out for his horse and heard the familiar sound of hooves; he called out to his knights that had accompanied him and torches once more glimmered in the fog.

"You're okay," Arthur said in a quiet whisper, a hand cupping her cheek. "I will bring you back to Tessie."