Wenn & Wolf Tales

wwe0350
~~~ Wolf and Man ~~~

Lord Wolf rose to his feet and looked down upon her where she sat. His voice was oddly stern, "You will have the time you say you have not." In fact, his voice was so strange that Wenn looked up to him in curiosity. As he pointed to the wolf pendant hanging against her bodice, his voice came down to her again and was ever stronger and more forceful, almost angry. "So long as you wear my symbol, you will not age! Nor shall you remove it till I release it from you! You will know what it is to be timeless. You will know the curse, even as I do!"

Wenndolyne became increasingly frightened at his tone and asked in a shaking voice, "Curse, m'lord?"

His momentary frustration was spent and he turned his back on her to stare at the fire within the hearth, even beyond the flames to a time long ago. Was he repeating an error, a grievous mistake he made centuries before?

Picking herself up from the floor to warily stand near him, Wenn tried to see what he was so focused on, but saw nothing to hold his attention so. Her movement stirred him however. He absently answered her question, not taking his gaze from the fire, "Aye, a curse it is to watch friends grow old and die, to watch those you love perish with time. Aye, curse it is, indeed."

"But you would wish to build such a temporary life with me... or lend me power to join you in this... curse..." Wenn continued after swallowing to find the remainder of her voice, "...for some attraction to me that I do not see?"

Lord Wolf turned toward her at last, his anger gone like a spring shower but there was now a sadness in his eyes, "Aye, selfish as it may be, I would share it with you, though you have not been the first."

"Prithee, share this with me then, m'lord." It was not a wish for immortality or anything like it, but somehow a slowly warming desire to ease what she perceived as his deep loneliness.

"You would share this endless life then?" He sounded incredulous, but then, he knew the consequences of such longevity. She likely did not.

Wenn's brow furrowed at first then a smile slowly grew upon her lips, "I've no real understanding of even that possibility, but... I think we may have found a point between us where we can meet." Wolf himself arched a brow, not at all certain as to her meaning. But she had seen a glimpse of something in his near anger and his sad eyes, so she explained, "Perhaps we start with... comfort."

"Comfort, M'Lady?"

"Yes, you comfort me as I work through my sorrows over Poet..."

"I... I but do what I can to ease that suffering."

"As I can mayhap bring you comfort in what seems to have been... a rather lonely path?"

"Lonely, yes, such it has been for so long now, M'Lady." He looked around him, his past feeling very close at the moment.

Wenn breached the pause, "I do not wish to offend thee, m'lord, but I have felt til now that you needed no one, least of all a mere someone like me."

The hint of a smile graced his handsome face, "Til now, I did need no one, M'Lady." He wanted to say more, that it was not just someone like her, but precisely her, yet he could only gaze at her sapphire eyes shining up to him.

"So, you seem to think you do have use for one such as me perhaps, and I... I suffer as someone found and lost again."

Wenn blushed as Wolf's fingers gently touched her cheek, "You? Lost? Nae, you it was who found me."

"I have not truly found you yet, m'lord, for you do oft stand back and watch me as though I am something fragile."

"As fragile as a dream you are, Wenndolyne. I fear I shall awaken and find you gone."

"Yet, if I am to come to know you well, I need affection and openness as you show me when you are the wolf." It was true, he was so much more careful and formal with her as the man, although this eve he had shown more. But, he had always seemed so easy and friendly with her as the wolf. If she could see them both more clearly, she'd admit she was also guilty in a way. The wolf had been protector but without threat of... what? Love?

Wolf smiled crookedly, "Things are easier when in animal form, for their ways are simpler to understand."

"Perhaps there is advantage to one form after all."

"Each form has its advantages. Of which do you speak?

"By one form I mean one, a single form. Until a few days past, I knew no other form. When you have only one, you cannot separate parts of yourself as such."

"Aye, yet even if there is more, each is a part of the whole. There is no separation."

She didn't know if she was misunderstanding him or if he was not seeing her point. "But I say there is, for the wolf is bolder, more affectionate, more playful, than the man who stands before me."

"True, but only to that of his own kind. As is the way of things, M'Lady." For a fleeting moment, Wolf wondered if that was truly why he wanted to give Wenn his pendant, so that in a way, she could be one of 'his kind' or at least approximating it.

"Nae, tis not his own kind whose feet he warms in the firehall and twas not his own kind he nuzzled before the fire just earlier."

(dp/dj)