fast falls the eventide
(part 1/2)
The thought that Rhydian keeps on coming back to is that Canada is a hell of a lot colder than Stoneybridge – that much had been obvious as he'd looked out of the plane window and down onto the snow-covered mountain tops of northern Quebec, and only continued as he'd stood sullenly outside the exit of Calgary's International terminal and waited for the shuttle bus to pick him up whilst shivering in his doubled-up socks.
The window that he's resting his head against mists up with every breath that he lets out. He'd got bored of drawing pictures in the condensation after about half an hour of driving as they skirted around the edge of town and joined the Trans-Canada Highway, around the same time as the only other passengers on the bus – a pair of kindly old ladies on holiday from their apparently increasingly senile husbands – stopped trying to talk to him. They'd made a fair effort of it, asking him all about where he was from and where he was going, and why such a young man was travelling all by himself. He'd stuck to the story that Segolia had come up for him back home, that he was visiting his long-lost uncle who he'd only just discovered, and even though he knows that they're only trying to be pleasant, he just doesn't have the energy; he's cold, he's tired after twenty hours of flights and changes, and he's in desperate need of a shower.
He doesn't even know if Maddy will be here. Of all the countries that her family decided to hide in, Canada is probably the worst to search for them in; Dacia managed to get in touch with her contacts before Rhydian left Stoneybridge and they'd said that Maddy's family were last seen in the mountains above Banff, but that had been over a month ago. They could be anywhere by now.
At least he'll be able to get a decent night's sleep tonight, he thinks tiredly as he burrows his hands deep into his armpits and closes his eyes – the early autumn light is starting to fade but it's still easy to see the forests as they thicken, and he can feel the bus climbing its way into the mountains. Or perhaps not, actually, since he's booked into a busy hostel for the evening in a moment of sheer frugality. Sharing a room with nine other people that he doesn't know isn't all that appealing but it might be the only time that he crashes on a mattress for a while; once he's up in the mountains themselves, it'll be a matter of sleeping as a wolf for extra warmth and eventually, the supplies in his backpack will run out and he'll have to hunt as a wolf as well.
It's a good job he's not vegetarian, he thinks absently as he dozes off against the cold window.
Instinct has him heading south into the National Park. He tries to use eolas periodically but he gets nothing – either Maddy is too far away, or she's never been there at all (and he hopes every night as the cold draws in that it's not the latter). He finds himself wishing more than once that he'd persuaded Jana to teach him how to use ansienn; at least then he'd know if he was on the right tracks.
On the third night, he wakes in the early hours to find a pack of wolves lurking amongst the trees where he's made his den. Their eyes are gleaming in the moonlight and he can tell immediately that they're full wolves, not wolfbloods – this is probably their territory, and they've come to force him out. As his heart pounds in his ribcage and he stares down the wolf that's closest to him, he wonders fleetingly why they haven't already charged him. Maybe it's the stench of human that he carries with him? Any full wolf, even one who's never encountered people before, would know from one good sniff that there's something not quite right about him.
Before they have a chance to build up the courage to attack him, he shifts into human form and stands from where he's made a nest out of a sleeping bag and his dirty clothes. They don't move for a second, frozen in place by the sight of him; he takes a step forward, and they scatter into the night with soft footfalls and gentle panting.
On the fifth day, it rains heavily for as long as the sun is up. He's painfully thankful that he had found shelter the previous night in a small outcrop of rocks, so he's only at risk of getting wet if he decides to venture outside. He spends most of the day absently trying to use eolas and reading the one book that he brought with him. He's already finished it on the flight across, but it's the only thing that he's brought with him to pass the time.
He runs out of food after a week of trudging slowly up the slopes and down into the valleys. He's been trying to keep track of where he is using an old National Park map that he found in a charity shop in Banff; he thinks that he's in between Mount Mercer and Turbulent but in truth he could be anywhere. The days are repetitive and cold and lonely, and he still hasn't had any luck using eolas.
He does have look with his hunting though – he manages to lure a deer fawn away from the herd and kills it with one vicious bite to the neck, dragging it to his shelter to eat. He gorges himself until he can't eat any more and then rests, allowing his body to start digesting the meat before shifting back to human and shouldering his backpack. It's a shame that he can't take some of the carcass with him – he's not even eaten a quarter of it – but carrying raw meat with him will just encourage other predators to follow him.
He misses the others more keenly that night, with the taste of blood still lingering in his mouth as he curls into a tight ball with his tail over his nose inside his sleeping bag. He doesn't have any issue with hunting as a wolf since they used to do it when he was living with Jana's wild pack but it's still a step closer to the wolf, and a step further away from the human. He misses each and every one of them – Shannon and Tom and Jana, Ceri and Gerwyn, Mrs Vaughn and his brothers, Mr Jeffries. He'd even be happy to hear the Ks bickering in the near distance, or have Jimi firing insults at him.
Most of all he misses Maddy; misses her eyes, her hair, her laugh, the way that her head fits just under his chin. It's been months since he's seen her face of heard her voice, months since he's run through the trees at her side under the light of the full moon. And buried underneath the desperate longing to find her again is the deep-seated fear that when they finally are together again, they'll both have changed too much. It won't be the same and they won't fit together the way that they used to – they won't always know when the other is looking at them, they won't know what the other is going to say before they do, and when they get angry with each other they won't make up like they used to.
His chest tightens and his stomach drops every time he thinks about himself and Maddy growing apart, and the coyotes prowl the woods around him.
On the tenth day the sun is shining and the air is warm, so Rhydian washes his clothes in the cold water of Marvel Lake and relaxes on the nearby grass; he catches and eats a marmot as the sun reaches its highest point and lies back on the ground with a full belly and a smile on his face.
That's when it comes – a flash of Maddy's face behind his eyes, there for a brief second and then gone, and it's not a memory because she's different. She looks older, and both hardened and relaxed at the same time, with longer hair that's pulled back into a ponytail and a smudge of dirt under her left eye as she grins, wicked and wild.
He sits bolt upright with a start and a gasp and his whole body feels electrified. His eolas kicked in subconsciously and he's found her, he's found her finally he's found her – she's near. He doesn't know how far his eolas can reach but she must be near, she can't be more than a day or two away.
He howls instinctively, a high note of pure delight that echoes all throughout the valley and up into the sky. He's found her.
Once he wakes in the morning and strikes his makeshift den, he feels like he has more of a purpose – more of a solid direction in which he knows he has to go. He finds himself howling every half an hour, more often than he's using eolas keep himself on the right track, and to start with some of the wildlife is curious about this howling, shifting creature that's hiking through their territory.
He's taken by surprise by a grizzly as he stalks a caribou herd for some lunch. There's a moment when it seems like the grizzly might attack him – a lone, hungry wolf is good odds for any bear – but then Rhydian makes a few quick switches between his human and wolf forms and the bear skitters away with a confused roar.
A wolf against a bear wouldn't win; a human against a bear wouldn't win. But he is a Wolfblood, he's more than a wolf and human combined. The wolves and bears and coyotes and once – as the sun starts to set – a cougar follow him at a distance as he presses on forward and closer to Maddy. They all know, with an innate and animalistic instinct, that he's not normal. He's not natural, but he's a curiosity, so they watch him and wait for the weak moment that they're not sure will ever come.
He resigns to camping for the night when it gets so dark that he's falling over his own feet and so cold that his fingers go numb – he finds an overturned tree whose web of exposed roots provides good shelter, and sets up a sort of barrier with the backpack and several nearby branches before making his nest with the sleeping bag and clothes. He's fairly confident that he won't be attacked during the night but he knows that he's not going to sleep well anyway; though it's mostly out of excitement.
He's seeing more and more of Maddy the closer he gets, and it's almost as if his eolas is making up for lost time and working in over-drive. He sees her hunting by herself and with her parents, playing in the snow with real wolves and helping her mum fix a section of the roof that's been leaking water in the ramshackle little hut that they've built.
Deep in the back corner of his mind as he sleeps and dreams he sees a brief, distorted flash of Maddy looking younger than she does now; she's sitting alone in a dank cave with her knees pulled up to her chest and tears streaming down her face as the wind wails outside, but he's forgotten it by the morning.
The air is blowing cold onto his face from the mountaintop when he wakes, and it brings with it the very faintest of scents; not one that he can pinpoint, but one that seems out of place in the middle of the mountain range, so he changes his clothes and splashes his face with water out of his canteen, and then begins the slow climb up into the snow with his backpack heavy on his back as he follows the scent, howling occasionally and hoping for a response.
He doesn't know how long he's been walking for when he hears it; he just knows that he cleared the treeline hours ago and the sun is shining brightly as he stops for a break near a patch of rocks, only a few hundred feet from the top. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the foreign scent that's been going stronger with every step he's taken up the mountain, and howls out of pure habit.
For a split second, he doesn't even register the answering call; his brain dismisses it briefly as just the echo of his own. But then his brain kicks into gear and he knows that howl, knows the flawed cadence and tone of it, the sound that he's been yearning to hear for so many months.
"Maddy," he breathes, and it feels like a whole dam of emotions has just been let loose – it's also the first time that he's used his human voice in a fortnight and his voice cracks through disuse and sheer relief.
He sees her a second later, silhouetted against the ridgeline and looking down at him. He doesn't even think, and he doesn't remember running to her when he thinks about it later, curled around her as the embers from the fire glow in front of them. He just drops his belongings and shifts into the wolf and runs, runs as fast as he can to her as she descends to meet him under the perfect sky.
(part 2/2 upcoming)