Wenn & Wolf Tales

wwe0340
~~~ Of A Kind ~~~

Wenndolyne descended to sit upon the rug before the hearth. She reached out to touch the wolf, to caress Wolf's face... his furred face. She abruptly pulled back her hand when Ancient Wolf began to glow with more than firelight, then shielded her eyes as he was quickly shrouded in the bright light of transformation. The white arctic wolf was soon gone and Lord Wolf, the man, sat there next to Wenn. He reached out tentatively, then gently took her hand, turning it to kiss her palm.

She slipped her hand back away from him, pulled her knees up beneath her skirts and hugged them. She stared at Lord Wolf, as yet unable to voice her confusion. He sat patiently, not wanting to push more than she cared to express, but finally he asked, "Care to discuss it?"

Wenn stumbled over words at first, then managed to string enough of them together to say her piece. "I am... I am oddly more comfortable with you in your wolf form... and yet.."

"Yet?"

She took a deep breath and let it out all at once as she looked up toward the ceiling, then drew her gaze downward again to search Wolf's now human face. He dare do or say nothing more but sit with her and let her speak her concerns.

"... and yet... I cannot love a wolf."

At last she touched on the issue and Wolf could perhaps work with her to unravel it. "Does this form displease you so?" His concern was genuine. He was already so taken with her, he would change for her if she wished it. He already had, going about as a more youthful man than he'd previously done by habit.

"No... No, I am just unfamiliar with it. You are a stranger to me."

"That will come in time, M'Lady. Perhaps if given time, the stranger will become a friend and then....who knows?"

She regarded him worriedly, curiously, "Are you mortal?"

He was thoughtful for a moment, then responded honestly, "I do not know. I have not put that to the test."

"But you have lived many years?"

"Aye, I have lived more than I care to remember, M'Lady."

Wenndolyne looked down and traced the patterns in the rug. "I have not."

Wolf's head tilted slightly to one side, "Does that scare you?"

"I have seen twenty-three summers. I know little about less it seems each year... as I discover what there is to know more fully." She paused but her fingers continued slowly in their pattern. Her voice became more quiet. "I AM mortal. I will grow old in but a few decades. I will die."

Lord Wolf sighed sadly, for her and for himself, for the fact that he hadn't really thought much on this. It was true that he would likely long outlive her, whether he was truly immortal or not.

Wenndolyne continued laying out the tangle of her thought, not only was she confused about how she could love a man who was wolf and both, but how could he, for all his power and abilities, have any reason to care for her? "I have no magic... except what you lend to me."

He leaned in a little closer and whispered most sincerely, "Yet you have enthralled me."

"I do not understand this." She shook her head and watched her fingers on the rug.

"What would you understand then?"

Finally Wenn looked up at Wolf again. "Can you be happy with me? Or am I but a curious flicker in the long stream of your life? And if I cease to be that, then shall you toss me aside like Poet before you answer some call on the wind?"

He was now puzzled. "M'Lady, do you feel as though you have been tossed aside? You are not some object to be kept nor given away. Tis you who will decide your fate, not I, nor M'Lord Poet."

"I don't know."

"Again, I ask, what would you know?"

"I suppose I know that Poet loved me, once, but haunts me still. And I cannot get accustomed to you without being shed of him, I think." She shrugged and hugged her knees again.

"Haunts you... Aye, I would think so, for ye did love him well."

Wenn rested her cheek upon her knees and muttered, "And the you I feel I know best is one I cannot have."

Lord Wolf reached over and drew her hands into his, gently but firmly, causing her to look up at his timeless emerald eyes. "Wenn, I am flesh and blood, even as you are. Do you not feel the pulse that races through my veins just like yours?" She gazed at their joined hands and slowly nodded, so he continued, "I am the form you now best and the one before you. I am both... and others as well. Yet within each still beats this heart." He drew one of her hands up with his own to tap his chest. "This heart that loves you."

Her eyes were sparkling with moisture, both touched by his gesture, his words, and yet still so very unsure of what she was doing. "My head tells me you are the same... but my heart..."

"Aye, it may take time."

"I want to understand, to know... I do."

Wolf regarded her, searching, but Wenndolyne closed her eyes against it. She turned her head away and a tear slipped out. "Though I may have learned another form, I am still not of your kind. I am human. I am mortal. This is all so very strange to me and you say only that it may take time... but you have time, perhaps all time. I am without that luxury."

(dp/dj)