Wolf Cries to The Moon

GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Will: (12)+14: 26

Winter came.

The years and the months have regressed for the dark-haired and violet-eyed dreamer, the memories of the life she's had since then buried at the back of her mind in that way that dreams do: where parts of lives can be folded and put away neatly by the subconscious, to explore the parts that are buried in the waking life. The parts that are too hard to explore, hidden under the bright snow of life's happier moments--waiting to peek out when the snow is melted and once again, she's forced to contend with what comes out of the thaw.

Just as the violet-eyed girl stares forlornly at the snow that falls outside of the small house in the woods somewhere in Rune. She's supposed to be warm in this house, but everything's gone from cold to frozen. Everything's numb. Has been numb. Will be numb forever. She doesn't remember and will never remember--that much is obvious to her, because it's been months, and Mother will never come home at this point. Her hopes died with the falling of autumn leaves and were buried under snow.

Along came night. Her final night. She's decided this much, this girl who doesn't remember her name (and will never remember). Slightly thinner than she is in the present, her clothes speak to times where she was fed by someone who cared for her, and she hasn't since much cared to feed herself. Her dark waves of hair are wound into one long braid that dangles over her shoulder, and the glasses that she doesn't need now since that day, worn only for comfort, droop on her nose.

"It's time," she whispers to herself. She takes the dagger that Mother kept for self-defense, and she holds it in a trembling hand as she walks out of the house, headed for the snow-covered trees. Darkness roils in her thoughts, and despair follows her like a cloak of fog. The hollow nature of her violet eyes speak to her intent.

The dream flexes unnoticed by the dreamer. A slight and subtle change as another enters the dream. Slips in among the trees and makes themselves inconspicuous. Not desiring to interrupt the winter scene the figure only observes. Notes small details. The thinness of the elvish girl, her dagger, the dark roiling in her eyes. As she moves toward the snow-covered trees the figure takes great pains to make himself less conspicuous. Clothes become white in color, blending with the snow, patterned with dots of darker color so as to merge with the tree he stands behind.

The howl of the winter wind causes her to hesitate in her tracks, shivering from the cold--as she's worn only a plain blue dress that goes down to her ankles, made from cotton that's far too light for the winter cold, and with no cloak in sight, nor gloves, scarf, and hat to keep her warm. There's a moment where she stops altogether, trembling, hugging her arms tightly to herself. There's a register of doubt in her violet eyes, but the hollowness comes back quickly after.

"I guess it doesn't matter how far I walk," she murmurs, looking down at the dagger in her hand, shivering. "They'll never go looking for me anyway."

She drops down to her knees in the snow, her braid of hair whipping around in the wind. The dagger held tightly in her hand. She stares at it... and she hesitates.

The figure watches until the girl drops to her knees and then slowly edges forward. Like one might come up upon a wild deer. He, for it is indeed a man, one fully grown and with soft silver eyes for the girl in blue. He stops well shy of her and lowers himself to the snow, crouching but not quite kneeling. "Stay your hand, if you would, for a moment." He offers to her, his voice quiet enough that it doesn't quite break the quiet of the forest around them but rather slips through it smoothly.

GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Will: (15)+14: 29

The girl in blue stares at the man with soft eyes at his offer, her eyes meeting his. There is... something there, suddenly, in the violet eyes, a spark of realization in them that lights up the darkness that had been there before. Subtly, her form shifts--filling out to be more like her current self outside of the dream, the dress shifting colors into a more befitting violet, and she places down her dagger into the snow.

"You," she says at first, although it's more like a question. Then comes an observation, delivered flatly rather than antagonistically: "You interrupted me."

Her hand goes to her braid, catching it in the wind. Suddenly she doesn't seem much to shiver anymore. "Why?" she asks, violet eyes on him. Curiosity is bright in them.

He offers a somewhat apologetic, somewhat almost regretful expression. "Would you have rather I let you do yourself harm?" He asks, not idly, but with real concern and curiosity. "Dreams like this... they can carry to reality, and if you were lost from the world... It would be a lesser place."

"No," she answers. And there's a small smile on her face. "That's not what I meant. I meant--why help a stranger, even in a dream? Unless you are not a stranger at all."

And there's a twinkle in her violet eyes, a sort of power running over her like a waterfall that wasn't there before. "This is a nightmare I have had before," she says. "It ends always the same way it did in reality. I lose my nerve. I drop the dagger. I let it bury underneath the snowfall, and I never come back for it. It's still out there in the woods to this day--some ordinary dagger that could have been my end. Like the ending to many a play in the Theatre District, the heroine whose dress is dyed scarlet with her own life."

Cor'lana--for that is who she is--unties the braid, letting the waves of her hair fly out in the wind. "Dream with me a better place than this, stranger-not-stranger," she bids. "A sunny sky and a field of flowers."

"No, we are not strangers are we?" The man asks, half-wonderingly if they are in fact after all. He doesn't move from his position, half-crouched near her. Within reach if she were to reach out, or he. But he does not.

She bids him change the place and he looks out across the snow, at the forest. "I don't know, for all that it is a place of sorrow to you, it is beautiful. I like the snow."

Cor'lana rises up from her place in the snow. Already, flowers bloom around her feet, peeking out from the frost in a way that they would almost never in reality. There is that twinkle in her eye as she holds her hand out to him. "Do you like the snow because it's what you've known all your life?" she asks. "Or would you be open to... a different scene, so long as you had someone to be in the scene with?"

And she asks in a whisper, for seemingly no reason at all, other than perhaps it carries well on the wind that blows her wild waves of hair about--as innocently as can be, "Would you prefer a violet moon instead?"

The man offers a roguish smile. "I come from the frostlands so, maybe that's why. I think snow will always have a nostalgic feeling for me. Even if thoughts of home are not always kind." He rises to his own feet, looking down at her and he offers his hand. "If you wish to leave I will not say no, but there is no need of a violet moon to hang in the sky. They exist already; inside your eyes."

She keeps the smile on her face as she receives the confirmation she was looking for, and... she takes his hand, gentle as he might have always pictured her to be. "Walk with me," she says. "Through these snow-covered woods. And talk awhile with me. I meant it when I said I was curious."

She looks up at him. "I have no fond affection for the land where I was raised, so I can understand not having fond thoughts of home. What happened there?"

Zalgiman smiles at the soft touch of her hand in his, his eyes brightening and he flashes her another roguish smile. "Another question-for-question my raven queen, but this time in dreams where lying to one another will be difficult?" A cold wind blows through the trees, and it seems to get colder in spite of the plants that have grown up through the snow. He gives a gentle shiver.

This is where the smile widens on Cor'lana's face as she begins to walk with him through the woods. She does not shiver at all, unlike him. "No, my wolf," she says, drawing now more firmly on the persona she has built, reaching deeper into the Unseelie within her bloodline. "It is as I said in the letter. If I am your queen--then I will ask questions, and you will answer, for a subject should be faithful and do as his queen commands. Remember, I have much to lose if I walk away from everything like you want me to. I am curious about you, this wolf who wants me to leave everything behind."

Then she adds, with a small smile, "You did just see one of my darkest moments from my own past. It only feels right that I learn more about you, does it not?"

Zalgiman considers this for a moment and the cold wind comes again, and he shrugs. "I saw a girl at the edge of darkness, but I do not know why. I do not know how she became the strong woman that I see before me. You ask me to unveil the whole of myself for the trade of a moment, am I not allowed to be curious about you?" He looks at her and there's concern in his silvery gaze. "I am not disinclined to share myself with you, to answer your questions, but I would be a fool to do so blindly. I think you would not suffer a fool long."

There's a giggle that leaves Cor'lana. "I like men who are fools for me," she says. There is no lie about that, really, considering who she wears the ring and mark on her left hand for. "But I understand. I had a point in that letter, too. Vulnerability... is intimacy, possibly of a kind most who bare their skin never show. You probably know about that, my wolf."

Her violet eyes flash in delight. "So. You may ask about that. May I receive an answer to the question I asked? About your homelands."

The silver-eyed man looks away from her at last, and the burst of cold wind is firmer than before. It's clear now that this wind comes from his thoughts, but that he has tight rein on them, because the dream itself has never wavered. They are however, leaving the forest well behind them, and the vast empty snow waits for them. "I was one of four sons, a typical family really. But..." His eyes darken. "I was from the very beginning unwanted, unnecessary. A child born too late. My mother never expected to birth a child so late in life, and she died. Father... blamed me for her death, and never let me forget that the fault was mine. There was no comfort amongst my brothers. They too cast blame at my feet."

He offers her a faint smile. "I had my dark days too. Days where I threw myself at a blade hoping that it would end my life, but no god listened to my wishes for death. No blade found my heart. I was forced to live instead."

GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Sense Motive: (16)+20: 36

Cor'lana closes her eyes and... she nods, just a little motion, and she squeezes the hand of his that she holds--a comforting motion. "Then we are the same in that regard," she replies, her violet eyes looking up at him. "My mother raised me on my own, without my father--I had been conceived as the result of a casual dalliance, and my mother was in hiding from him."

She brushes a lock of her waves behind her half-sil ear. "It is... difficult to live in a place where you are not one nor the other," she says. "Not fully human, not fully sil. Neither side understands your existence. So I withdrew from the unkindness of the other children. When she passed on before my eyes... That is when I began to wish for death. And occasionally, I made attempts at it, as you saw. No god ever listened to my prayers, either, so I tried... to do it myself."

Cor'lana looks back up at Zalgiman. "How did you come to be... what you are now?" she asks. "Were you always a lone wolf howling for the moon, and made into one by the cruel poetry of life?"

The man - werewolf - laughs at this. "No. I was not born to wolfdom. Not changed by the longing of the moon, or some unhappy witch with ready curse. Marsward came to me when I was eighteen. I was... I was as low as a man could be and he offered me what seemed like the world at the time. Strength, power, friendship. I didn't understand then the cost of it."

There's bitterness there and he looks at her. "I became something else then. A leader of men. Confidant where I had been weak. Strong where I had been uncertain. Women threw themselves at me, and I had them in eagerness. But never one that... challenged me. Never one that cared." He smiles softly suddenly. "You're the first person since Marsward to ask me about my life at all."

GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Perform/Oratory: (16)+23: 39

And there's a soft look in her eyes, maybe one that Zalgiman's never known from another. Cor'lana looks at him like she has found someone so similar to herself: someone hurting, someone who lost the path but found it elsewhere--and yet here they are now, in the unreal snow in the land of dreams, odds beyond odds that they are here together.

Her lips part. And she sings.

"Wounded soul, a kindred home:

Your weary feet bring you here

Yet paid a price you couldn't know;

Your heart so lost to the dark,

Yet yearns for the moonlight

That you could never know--

But I am here, wounded soul,

A moonbeam here to bring you home;

For the moonlit soul is not so cruel

That She would turn her sight away;

The path is open and yours to climb

Should you be willing, should you desire,

For love comes in all forms and colors

And I bring you the love of one

Who knows what it's like

To be lost in the dark--

Only to find one blessed by the moon,

Only to love one blessed by the moon,

To be healed and comforted by Her and him."

Cor'lana squeezes her hands, looking up at Zalgiman so openly with violet eyes, not a single ounce of lie in them. "Do you understand?" she asks. "For I do care. I have found myself surprised by how much I do care. But that, too, is in my nature. Will you think about it, my friend?"

Zalgiman listens to her words, her song enraptured. When she is done, her question comes and he turns his head down. "I am..." He drops her hand. "I am forsaken by that moon, a goddess I have never known. Are we friends Cor'lana? Is there even the hope of that between us? I am a fool."

He blinks and turns away, returning prose for prose without looking at her.

“These scarred wings,

They can not hold me,

Nor carry very far,

But their feathered edge,

It reminds me,

Gently comes restful,

Endless repose.

The violet moon,

Lies on crimson hills,

The wolf it howls,

When night it finally fades,

Gently comes restful,

Endless repose.

An answer to a question,

A prayer spoken,

Between trembling fingers,

And shifting snow,

Gently comes restful,

Endless repose.

I am answered,

I am free,

Come swift bite,

And gentle ache,

Crimson spill in cream,

Gently comes restful,

Endless repose."

Cor'lana listens intently, and... she shakes her head, tears coming to her eyes. "No," she says. "No, please--"

And she finds herself sprouting wings, carried on her hopes to save another so like herself. She propels forward and catches herself on him, wrapping her arms around him, and she kisses him on the cheek, a mirror of where he once kissed her. "You are not forsaken. You are not, Zalgiman Joaki, and I can lead you to hope. I can lead you to happiness. There's all kinds of love and I think--if you had a real friend, you'd be happier than you ever knew, happier than what you've known up to this point. I never, ever knew that happiness could come for me until I said yes to living, and made a massive change in my life."

She draws back just a little, tears brimming in her violet eyes. "Please--give it a chance. There is someone, right here, who wants to give you a chance at being happy. There is such a thing as love in friendship, fondness and warmth at having a friend near. You just have to say yes."

And... she finds herself whimpering in a soft voice. "Don't let this dream end as a nightmare, like the way it started."

To his surprise, and perhaps hers, there are tears in his silver eyes. He shakes his head helplessly. "I should have died long ago my raven queen. It would have been a gentler passing. I trusted Marsward, and I reveled in the life he gave me. What would I have without him? Your friendship, and watching you with another man in your arms, having children with him? Being happy while my heart aches with loneliness? I would have killed him first. In jealousy and hate. Loathing him for having what I can not touch."

"If I live I will only hurt you, hurt others. I know myself, and what I can not have I destroy. Even now I fight between these instincts. The desire I have to break your heart, and the desire I have to free you from the burden of my love." He shakes his head. "No, I will not give you nightmares, but if I hesitate on waking I will come for all you have a ravenous wolf. Let me go. Let me go."

There is so much she wants to say. So much that she can't say. She wants to tell him that there is hope, that possibly, Ni'essa, the goddess of her beloved, could cure him--that there could be someone else who walks in the light that could be waiting for him in the future, who would love him better than she ever could.

But Cor'lana knows. Knows better than anything the finality in his words, for she, too, is a poet. She has had a broken heart before. In this moment, she knows what she has to do.

Tears stream down her face. But she knows this is best. She knows this is the best for everyone. "I love you," she says. And she isn't wrong about that--not in the way that he wants her to love him, but she loves him nonetheless.

She pushes her lips to his.

And she wills a dagger into her hands.

A dagger that she goes to plunge into his heart, to release him from this world, to release him from this torment. An apology that she cannot speak written on her lips.

He doesn't expect it. There's surprise in his silver eyes, and they widen even as the dagger plunges into his chest. He staggers back from her lips, his fingers touching the knife and he looks at her. It's not betrayal written on his face but understanding. Hopelessness. He falls to his knees, crimson staining the beautiful white ground. He can not stop the trembling fingers that find the knife from pulling it free in a gout of blood.

Somehow, he is not yet dead. His lifes-blood pours free from the wound, blacker than the crimson stain normally poured free from less vital wounds. A pure white glow pulses from him and his tears slip free his eyes. They run streaming down his face and the wound closes.

There's no trace of anything but despair left in him. And then without any explanation or reason, he's suddenly gone. Torn from her dream like the page from a book. His blood on the ground, his face burned into her eyes.

She'd hoped to give him freedom from this life, to give him the freedom from despair, to give him one ounce of comfort before he died, so that he would not die alone and unloved--but forces more powerful than herself don't even grant him that relief, so it seems to her.

Cor'lana Lúpecyll-Atlon stands in the bloodied snow, the bloodied dagger in her hand. Tears continue to stream down her face. She tosses down the dagger into the snow, and she screams in a sudden but primal rage that takes her. Anger that someone, something, could be so cruel but to have that poor soul keep living.

Then she gives a beat of those powerful wings from her back. Her voice not hoarse from her anguished scream, only by miracle of it being a dream, she gives her word: "I swear it by Ni'essa and by Vaire. I will free that man from his torment. I will do what it takes. One way or another I will."

There is only the sound of her panting, not even the snowfall. It is almost time to wake.

"One way or another, I will," she says again, a refrain that touches her feytouched heart, the chaos soul.

She wipes the feeling of the kiss from her lips. She offers a single, solitary, "I'm sorry," to the snow and the blood.

And then... she wakes. A change of seasons, where majesty mourns.

-End