Rynn awoke to the touch of a cold wet nose on her cheek and the rough tongue of something licking her face. She felt the tail of something sweep her shoulder as it turned around to talk to something.
I believe she is doing better now; she seems to have awoken from her slumber. It was a rough voice, rugged with age and wisdom, the voice of a sagely monk who knew the answer to all, but at the same time that of a battle-hardened warrior, his voice scarred by the weapons of fell enemies.
That is well, another voice replied. This voice was familiar to Rynn. Sweet, pleasant, calm, this voice had sung before. Rynn, you are safe. I have healed your wounds and removed any signs of infection from them. She looked gently down upon the unmoving body upon the bed.
Where... Rynn began. Where am I? She opened her eyes and looked around the room. She saw a woman and a wolf at her side. What is that thing?
Calm yourself, dear child, he is an ally. The wolf sat upon his hind legs and its tail swished behind him in the air in contentment. This is Rravka, the alpha male of this wolf pack.
And of a wolf pack that has only recently reclaimed the land their ancestors once held, a long, long time ago. The wolf sat no longer, as it paced back and forth across the room with an almost human look of concern on his muzzle. I bet you are wondering how you can understand me, Lady Rynn? The wolf smiledcuriously.
Erm Yes, she stuttered. That would explain a few things. Rynn sat up in the bed, her feet dangling from off the edge wrapped in their white cloths. With the other womans help, the bleeding had stopped only moments after it began. There was nothing to replace the blood lost in the battle; only time could heal that wound.
You see, the healer explained, The wolves allow non-wolves to hear them. In essence, you could always hear them. She looked upon the ceiling as if to find inspiration for her words as she paused but a moment to organize her scattered thoughts. You could always hear them, but it was like they wouldnt allow you to because Well
Because we would not want those in hearing distance who are not allies to be able to understand us. You could never hear us, as the only vocal communication we have come in the form of howls, barks, and growls. Those you cannot understand. But you can understand telepathy. The wolf gazed into Rynns eyes, as if trying to instill some sort of understanding for such an awkward concept of speaking. You dont even have to look closely: neither of my jaws is moving, but you hear my voice inside of your head.
That didnt answer my question. Rynn looked impatient. Although that was my second question, you did not know of the first. She started to become angry, her fist bunching the sheets in her hand. Why were you slaughtering the townsfolk? Rynn shot up to a standing position nearly falling over as the blood rushing to her head. Caught by the priestess and the wolf, she laid back down upon the white sheets on the bed.
That was the easy part, began the woman. A shock of horror embedded themselves into Rynns eyes as she looked at the serene stars of the healer. Illusions. There was some sort of a growl mixed with a bark and howl behind her; Rynn assumed it was the wolfs way of laughing. None of the townspeople were killed; they were merely knocked unconscious
As you had bashed one of my best Lieutenants against the wall, finished the wolf. You see, no actual harm was done: you were the only one hurt in this battle to control a town. Rynn was confused.
Illusions? But it all looked so real! Rynn did not believe the words that were coming forth from their mouths.
That is how they are, replied the elegant one. They are meant to look as real as one can imagine them to be. Lucky for me, I had a vivid imagination. Do tell us though: why were you here in the first place? This is a common place for the common thief to find a clan and join their ranks The healer eyes her with a friendly yet suspicious glance.
I had to finish some unfinished business, replied the wounded. I couldnt let my work be left undone for nearly five years It had to be completed one way or another. I danced with the leader of my previous clan, and won. The clan is now under my control, but I shall disband this group so that they may do no more wrong to any more innocents. She began to choke on her words.
We know what has been done; the past can not be changed. The wolf was sitting down again, its head lazily hanging in the air. Do not worry about what you have done; worry about what will now do. Your clan has agreed to remove themselves from the lands that were once ours, and now belong once again to the wolves and to nature. We shall leave them be where they may set up, but it shall not be near here. They have agreed to these, and are gathering their belongings as we speak. What has been taken from us has finally been reclaimed.
Rynn was now peering onto the grounds below their tower, watching the little ants go about their chores, with smaller, more agile ants weaving in and out about them. So What happened?
When? The wolf looked attentive once more.
Back when your lands were taken from you Rynn had rest her arms upon the windowsill and her chin upon her arms. She was gazing at a setting sun, falling below the mountains to the north.
Nearly five hundred centuries ago? Do you really care to know? The wolf was in high spirits; not one soul he had met until now had wanted to know his story. He was finally going to be able to relate his tale to another soul, even if it was not a wolf.
~~~~~~~~~~
Oh where to begin Ah, yes, it was a long time ago, even though you already know that. I was still a young pup in those days; my grandfather led the wolf clan at the time. It was a time of peace: we had not encountered a single unfriendly soul for what seem like centuries; although, granted, it was not nearly that long. We seemed to be alone in this land, along with the other animals with whom we coexisted. We ate their weak and sickened, and left the rest alive. We did not attack their packs, and they stayed out of the way of ours. We met rarely; it was probably for the best.
Then on one vivid morning, we saw white things hanging in the air on the horizon over the sea. We did not know what to expect; these were new and strange to us, and we were filled with much mystery. Talk of the end and of a new beginning was soon spreading like wildfire; yet in the end, all theories thought were wrong.
It was strange to us that new beings began to appear on vessels made of trees from the seas to the southeast. Their vessels of trees were massive and strong; they were so big that they could not bring them too close to the shore. They set up little camps as smaller trees carried more of them to our land, and with each passing day, their numbers grew larger and larger. Soon, they began to destroy the forests and began to drive us from our homes. We met them in the night, and with them made our first pact. They called themselves humans, and looked down upon us with a mask of gratitude that hid their disgust. Oh how could we be so nave; they were never our friends and allies.
We allowed them to live on our land for they had done nothing wrong to us, and we had done nothing wrong to them. We coexisted in an uneasy peace for a few years, until the point where they once again began to drive us from our lands, pushing us inland as each day passed. We did not know it ourselves; it our efforts to avoid contact, we retreated further and further into deeper forests that we did not know, yet became familiar with in time. Only when we lost sight of the sea did we realize what was happening...
"Reports of a murder spread throughout the lands: one of the humans had killed one of our four-footed friends with a strange mechanism. It let ring a loud sound that hurt our sensitive ears, and a projectile shot forth from the beasts mouth at such speeds we could not see it or avoid it. They had many of them, but we had never seen them used before. They had many other strange tools that they used to fell trees, and them shape them into their dens and homes, their final state so different from the original you did not know anymore that it was once a fellow tree.
The uneasy peace ended when we attempted to find the killer of our wolf. The beings would not answer any of our questions, and we began to become worried. Why will they not aid us in our endeavor? we asked ourselves. They mistrusted us as we had not mistrusted them. We had no reason to do so; they believed they had every reason in the world to keep their secrets hidden because of the sole fact that we were different. We were not like them, and therefore a threat to their livelihood.
Then they began to want more land, which we could not allow. Evenly divided were the lands between us, but still they wanted more. They continued to grow in numbers nearly exponentially, although the floating vessels had stopped coming a long time before. They continued on to push us further into lands unknown; we met other wolf packs of whom being oppressed as well. We were surrounded in the near middle of the plains by this time, with nowhere left to run.
Skirmishes between our people sparked in even the remote places; they did not believe we would be able to get wind of our remote camps far from our home forest; but we did. Messengers came to inform us of massacres in the mountains to the north. They relayed to us of battles which were not fought, because our own were killed while they slept, from distances we could not traverse before we were slaughtered.
We attempted to send a few of our most well-known representatives to their councils to ask their motives and reasons for these attacks. They disappeared for nearly five moons, and upon the night of blood moon did they drag their carcasses into our encampments. Those of who were able to return related to us the brutal executions of their brothers and sisters, tortured slowly and then slaughtered in their time of departure.
Then began the siege.
Balls of fire fell from the sky, felling trees and setting them on fire before their tops had even reached the ground. Many of our wolves were crushed in their weight as I watched from my mothers den, still only a young pup. They used our sense of smell against us: they brought with them the blood of dead wolves to confuse our noses and drive us mad. We could not smell them in the ash and smoke and blood until they were right on top of us.
Shots rang through the night, forever burned in my memory. The sight of my father diving in the path of one of those metal shards in a futile attempt to save my mother as it tore a gaping hole in his side, passed through him, and into her neck. She was killed instantly, and he only moments after he hit the ground.
I was still but a young pup.
The wolves farther south and came upon a ruined temple, with passages so dark and narrow that our enemies would not be able to get through them. There were only scores of us left by this time; our foes did not relent in their chase in the hunt. Their beasts needed not the rest we did; they never stopped howling in the night, bringing with them songs of death and despair.
We were wrong about using the ruined temple as our shelter; they found out somehow that it had become our refuge, and proceeded to destroy it as well. Even more of us were trapped in the collapsed hallways and loose rocks that fell from the ceilings and walls as the temple began to crumble around us.
I was a little older now, but still I could not fight.
I was able to lead the hundred or so remaining wolves to the sea in the south. Our raven friends spotted land to the southeast. There they saw no signs of buildings, smoke, and fire; they saw only jungle, flourishing as it had never been touched by beings so corrupted as they. We traveled southward in search of some bridge to take us through, but could find none.
The beings were still in pursuit; they had yet to cease and allow us to rest. It had been nearly three decades since the first hearings of their vileness; we were weary and tired, but it was as if they were machines, never stopping, never halting, never bringing their offensive assault to a rest. Many of us were killed in the water as we tried to swim away; many of the young pups were drowned before they were out of sight of the beach; many of the rest were killed, sent to the bottom of the sea by fatigue and hunger. Half of us never left the beach that day And half of the rest were lost to the rolling sea.
I do not know myself how it happened, but when I next awoke, we were upon dry land. There were only a few dozen or so wolves yet; many were weak and stumbling, nearing death with every passing breath. The sea carried more to our new home, but many of them were dead upon setting their first foot upon dry sand.
From that time, we rebuilt our honor upon that island, living in self-exile from our homelands. Our packs flourished as we roamed the islands and lost one another, only to find the other families years later as our numbers grew more and more and the land each one held became less and less. We had only recently remembered of the lands to the northeast, and decided to try once more to reclaim our old lands.
We sent a few scouts to see what has happened in the past few decades, and everything has since changed. There are no more machines, no more guns, and the people that drove us from our land have seemed to disappear, leaving in their presence some lesser being of their same image. These people are weaker; they could not fully kill a lone wolf as they had done so before. They attempted murder our scout, but the scout killed his would-be assassin. He returned and gave us his full report: their presence was now gone; there was no more resistance to be found.
Two moons ago, our seer had a vision of a blonde-haired being, leading us to victory against his own people. Our scouts found this creature, and we are now seeking him as we slowly retake our lands. The people of this town attempted to murder the council he had sent them, and so we retaliated by annihilating their footholds; we have yet to kill a soul. We are driving these vile beasts out of the lands that were once ours, many seasons past. We will not stop until we reclaim what is fully ours, and we will seek our hero unto our death to aid us in our quest. This is but the second town we have come to conquer; he was last seen at this place by our raven friends from the sky.
And now we seek this mans aid while we set out to retake our lands. This brings us up to now; you have witnessed the beginning of our reign once more over the lands of nature. Many of the old trees and forests are now gone, but we shall make do. We will drive the human presence from our lands; our sanctuary shall be reclaimed!
~~~~~~~~~~
A few minutes of silence passed between the wolfs final sentence of his past and the time when Rynn returned to the present. The healer looked on, understanding what had transpired. The stars in the night sky twinkled in their delight, dancing upon the canvas of the deep dark space upon which they were displayed. The moon smiled big and bright that night, as if it were finally content as to the current events. A few comets flew through the sky, not passing the gaze of the girl at the window.
I experienced the same emotions and feelings you had, Rynn. She was sitting in a chair as Rynn was still looking out the window. Now as a helper of the earth, you know why they chose me as an ally.