The Northmen come dressed in furs, wrapped tight like the living hide of an animal.
They have horns- like beasts. But they are not. Even with their tempered steel and seemingly boundless cruelty, they are still felled by teeth and claws, the same as all other mortal things.
After leaving three of them dead in a snowy clearing, Aisling laughs voicelessly to herself and thinks the whole thing very funny.
Brendan and his old friend escape to somewhere far away; somewhere neither her forest nor she can reach.
For a while, she sits high up in one of her trees, thinking, and wonders if he will live long enough for her to see him again.
She had never been told how long she would live, even by her own mother. Somehow, though, living alone for so long had made the answer clear.
Aisling has been a child, or at least the facsimile of one, for a very long time.
She continues on for many more years.
She stays a wolf, most of the time-at first because the Dark One had taken her strength, and later because it was much simpler to be a beast then a child.
There are other humans after Brendan, wanderers coming from or to the ruins of Kells, but they are no threat to her. If they wander too deep, they need only a quick glimpse of her to take off in the other direction.
Brendan returns about twenty years after he had first left. He is taller. His eyes are older, but they are just has kind as they were long ago. He has a beard, now. His older friend is not with him.
Brendan has changed. She has not.
She leads him to his old home- even this simple action brings about a feeling she had last experienced when he was a boy and she was still a child.
She lets him hear her laughing, as he runs behind, calling her name.
As they reach the outskirts of her forest, she reveals herself in full, showing him that between them, only one has changed. He seems only slightly surprised.
He visits Kells for a time, but he has to leave again soon. She understands, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.
She walks him through her forest.
She knows Crom Cruach is gone, but she still feels a prickle of dread as they pass his dwelling place.
He tells her of his mission- to bring light to even the darkest corners of Ireland. She remembers the way beauty seemed to pour from what was scrawled on parchment or stone.
Aisling is not sure if that is a world she can ever take part of, but perhaps if there are great darknesses out to hurt, so can there be great lights keeping her from harm.
She stays a wolf for the first portion of their journey, but eventually she feels right enough to reveal herself. She has always been smaller than him, but now she barely reaches his waist. He laughs a bit at this.
She allows it.
They both remember her threats, long ago- made with curled, clawed fingers and sharp teeth. She needs only to call, and her wolves will come.
(Every wolf in her pack is one that was born after the Vikings' attack. Even her wolves lay down and die; much faster than humans, even.)
Brendan leaves much too quickly for her liking. She says goodbye to him at her forest's edge, and she is aware of how small her voice sounds as she tells him to visit again someday.
He never does. She stays near the ruins of Kells for many years, guiding her pack and guarding her creatures.
Always, though, in the back of her head, she wonders what he is doing, and if he is too busy to make the journey back to see her.
She knows humans are slow, but she thinks that it has been far too long for a simple trip.
She waits, but he does not return. Eventually she concludes that he too, has been overtaken by mist. It seems strange to her, and she half expects that he will defy convention and return someday.
She tells herself that it is to be expected, that humans live for barely any time at all.
Somehow, this makes her feel worse.
Aisling wanders. Her forest is large, and there are so many living things there. She leaves them all to grow, but still somehow thinks of herself as their caretaker.
She stands by as they are born, grow old, and die.
She considers it a grievous err to harm any of her creatures- and this is luckily an easy thing for she herself to avoid. She feels no need to eat them, and she does not require warmth.
Over the years, the humans begin to build further and further into her forest.
She fights, at first, but she finds that humans have begun to change. They have lost their old fears, and replaced them with new ones.
They no longer quake in fear of the dark nameless things that lurk in hidden places. The humans she sees are alive and bright, with illumination behind their eyes.
She wonders if this was Brendan's doing somehow; if he has indeed done as he said and brought light to all places. Aisling is happy for them, in a way, but they are pressing harder into her forest each day, and she fears for herself and her beasts.
Many more years are spent chasing humans away from the heart of the wood, snapping at their heels to deter them permanently.
Aisling grows exasperated, but she cannot bring herself to feel truly angry at them anymore.
Instead there is an aching sadness, a worry that her home will be lost, and somehow, a strange understanding that she is the only thing in this place that does not change.
It seems she is the last remnant of the elder days, just as she is the last of her people.
Soon she will have to leave. She knows that while she and others like her may persist even still, the world in which they live does not belong to them anymore. She does not by any means like this, but nature has taught her that no one is exempt from the laws that govern all things. Not even the last of the Tuatha De Danann.
The world changes. She does not.
She spends some time curled up by the massive roots of the remaining ancient oak trees, visiting hundreds of years of memories. She sheds tears where she sits, and things grow from where the droplets fall, alive and petaled white.
It is beginning to turn to autumn when she decides to retreat to a dwelling place. Her people would slip in and out of these places long ago, shrouded by mist. They are fewer now, unmaintained as they are, but she knows of one that still holds strong.
It is not far from the tree she and Brendan climbed many lifetimes ago.
She finds her way into the sidhe, and settles down in the in-between space. She wonders about her wolves- she has already elected a leader in her place. Time has changed her beasts in more than offspring and death, though.
With every new pack, the fear of humans grows a little stronger. She worries that they will grow soft and weak in her absence, but there is nothing to be done.
Aisling sleeps, as many of her kind have taken to doing in other places. They stay tucked in underground mist and darkness, staying asleep far longer than any man could live. Perhaps the day will come when they shall be wanted again.
.
.
.
That day is not now, and not then, but still Aisling wakes.
She leaves her dwelling place as quickly as she had entered, and stares around at what had once been her forest.
The trees were still many, but they were smaller than the old ones, and they lacked the ancient heaviness of thousands of years' growing. They are tall, surely holding up many wild creatures in their branches.
Aisling calls for nearby wolves. They will not know her, but they will quickly learn that she is their rightful master. She waits for a moment in the new forest, but she hears nothing that sounds anything like a wolf. Could they have left with the old trees, and likewise the old ways?
She makes her way from tree to tree, relying now on skill as opposed to memory. The forest is smaller, to be sure. It does not take long before she happens upon a human settlement in the distance- a large one. It looks both familiar and new all at once, as if new ideas have been tacked into old ones.
As she watches from the forest's outskirts, she takes note of the large path winding from the town and entering the wood a ways away.
Something huge, dark and loud barrels down this path from the woods, and she makes a noiseless move to conceal herself, before stopping to wonder.
What sort of new world could this be?
There was no way of knowing how long she had slept for.
Perhaps all traces of her people's existence had been forgotten.
Perhaps the old ways had been abandoned completely.
She struggles with herself for a moment. To proceed would be to fight every ancient, primal instinct in her body, but perhaps that is what the hand of Fate has intended.
She fairly forces herself to move; though she still still remained as quick and silent as ever-
and as Aisling steps out of the treeline, it occurs to her that perhaps she has changed a tiny bit after all.
.
.
.
There is a great bustling and fervor in the town when Aisling arrives. Everywhere she looks, humans are yelling and running and dancing. They were once serious, solemn creatures.
She thinks she likes this better, though perhaps it is better admired from a distance.
There are more noisy dark things here and there. They are on wheels, like carriages, but they move very fast and smell odd and altogether unpleasant, She makes a face to herself.
The humans all seem so happy together. She walks slowly, carefully, so as not to attract too much attention. She knows she only resembles a human on the shallowest level- and she has no idea if her kind is well-received here. So she stays low- like a beast in unfamiliar territory.
The human celebration is rather enjoyable to watch, but she decides to distance herself from the crowd. With no effort, she scales one of their buildings from behind and sits atop the roof, watching and marveling at how free of pain everyone seems to be. The sun begins its slow descent towards the horizon, exactly as it did many hundreds of years ago.
As time goes on, she casts her gaze to another settlement on the horizon. It looks much like this one, though it lies on the other side of a great deal of forest. There are roads leading through the trees; big ones. The humans enter and leave the forest with no trouble at all.
For a relatively short time, Aisling moves through the wood from town to town, regarding the humans from her hiding places. She never stays long. Though she remains mostly unnoticed, she never feels entirely welcome.
The spring turns to autumn. The weather grows slightly colder, though it is of no consequence to her. She sees a city from the wooded hill she rests on and decides to venture there. What is there to lose, after all this time?
There seems to be another human festival going on when she arrives. It is some sort of harvest celebration- something like Samhain, but here it seems to be only children enjoying themselves.
They have disguised themselves as all manner of creatures, and are running about in packs like wild dogs. The thought makes her smile.
She slips in among a crowd of small children, dressed up as various beasts. As they line up for their pay, she moves past them, as unnoticed as the silent creep of mists. She settles herself by one of the windows, watching the children run about in masks and fancy dress.
A boy and his sister climb onto the bus, sitting in the very back seat. Aisling pauses. There is something unseen surrounding them. A presence she has not felt in a long time.
It is of the old days, and yet new all at once. She stiffens as she realises that another like her sits mere feet away.
She stares straight ahead, not daring to look behind.
She wonders if they are wandering as well, or if they have come with a purpose.
The boy and his sister get off shortly after. The feeling passes.
Aisling breathes a sigh.