Now that the taxes had been dealt with and the weather started to warm up – and she got completely smash on St. Patrick’s Day – Skoll began to patrol again. When she did, the words written on the tombstone kept coming back to her. The names pulled at her mind, nagged at her. She had to figure out who they were, why they consumed her mind. She had to know who the Wolfmistress was. But she had no idea who this was, and the Internet was completely useless.
What it did lead her to was the little phone she had as a senshi. She never used it, for…. Anything. Just had it. It had an interesting option for ‘home’ that made her frown. They didn’t have a land line at the apartment, and she didn’t think her father had a landline either. Which made it curious. So she stood outside her apartment, phone open, and pressed the call button for home.
The world shifted and lurched around her. The city was replaced with a forest, giant fir trees towered into the air tens of feet above her. The sudden shift sent her reeling for a moment before she settled herself. The forest was quiet, just the soft rustle of wind through the needles and branches. It smelled heavily of pine and earth and the outdoors. Skoll took a deep breath of the clean air and let out a breath. Home.
The thought made her frown. Home? She’d never been here before. But it was home. Her home. These forests – and there were many more across the moon – were her home. Through the trees, she could see the giant planet of Saturn and her rings, faded against the orange sky. Orange sky… instead of blue. How particular.
Something tugged her forward, and she began to walk through the trees. Her shoes crunched on the fallen needles and dirt, but that was the only sound. No animals or people existed here, not anymore. She knew this, how, she didn’t understand. The path she followed felt familiar to her, as if she’d walked it a thousand times before. It curled up a hill, passing through the ruins of a village. There was a flicker of an image, and for a moment, she saw the huts, the buildings that sat on the foundations. She blinked, and it was gone. Only the ruins remained.
It was a large village, laid out around a central fire pit. She counted the foundations of at least twenty buildings, all which varied from a several paces wide to four times the size of her apartment. Each of the moderately sized ruins, about twenty paces by thirty, had a smaller ruin next to it. An outhouse or shed perhaps. The largest of the buildings was at the north end of the village, on a small rise. She thought it could have been the meeting house, or big communal space. Something flickered across her mind, but she couldn’t hold on to it.
Skoll walked through the ruins and passed them, back into the woods. The path lead her through denser and denser trees, until it spilled her out into a large clearing under a positively massive oak tree. An oak tree in the middle of a pine forest. Well, it looked like an oak tree, but perhaps it was somewhat different? She couldn’t tell because of the thing in front of it.
An equally massive set of bones lay curled up at the base of the tree. It was far larger than any dog back home, or a wolf. At least twice the size of a hefty gray wolf, she figured, based on the skull size. She walked up to the skeleton and marveled at it. The top of her head came up to it’s shoulder blade – lying down mind – and the jaws could have swallowed her whole.
Yet instead of fear, she felt sadness looking at the bones of this great beast. Skoll pressed her hands to the skull and cradled his head in her arms, pressing her mouth to his forehead.
”Sleep, my great companion. Sleep and know you’ve fought well,” she said in a soft, sobbing voice. She pushed her face into the bright blue fur of the dire wolf, feeling the labored breaths, the slowing heart rate. He rumbled a sound in his chest, a whine of pain and concern. He didn’t want to leave her, she knew, not as Chaos was poisoning the clans, poisoning the wolves. She couldn’t fight this alone, even as the princess of the world. They were a team! He couldn’t leave her, he couldn’t!
“Shh, Dellingr, shh, it’s okay. I will be okay. You will see me again, my bonded. In the cosmos we will be together forever. Shh,” said the senshi, soothing his worries. She pulled back to look into his bright eyes. They blinked once, twice, then slowly slid closed, and did not reopen.
Rage burned in her belly and she tipped her head back to keen a howl to the sky above. It echoed through the trees, then faded out. Her ears flicked and she straightened.
“Fang Faelan of the Dellingr Clan, and Sailor Skoll of the Pack, we’ve come for your heart,” said a voice behind her. She’d known they were there, watching her wolf die, watching her expel her emotions to the sky. They kept the old ways though, and gave her space until it was done.
Faelan turned, baring sharp canines in a snarl. The three men behind her did not flinch, did not even twitch, only watched her as the center one spoke. “For laying with your wolf as you would a man, for binding your soul to your beast, and for the massacre of more than twelve clans alone, your heart is forfeit.”
She smiled at them, lips closing over her teeth. Her ears flicked forward, animistic gold eyes bright with rage and blood thirst.
She lunged.
Skoll jolted backwards and stared at the bones of the great wolf. Dellingr. Her wolf. Faelan. The Fang Faelan was the Wolfmistress… and the former senshi of Skoll. She’d… been that woman, with teeth and ears and a blood thirst that could not be sated. The rush of the memory hit her like a truck and her vision swam.
This was the not the first time she’d been alive.
Her mind was blank as she numbly fished out her phone and sent herself home.
She was Faelan…
[WC: 1159]
