That night he dreamed he was in the woods, alone. The only trees that he could see were those immediately surrounding him; otherwise the forest was black fog that swirled and writhed like a pile of infant dogs. Though he was meandering in the unknown, he was not afraid, and he still navigated each step as if this was the selfsame forest he commanded during the day. He wandered it aimlessly, perhaps searching for a meal or perhaps in thought, but after what seemed like an eternity or maybe a handful of heartbeats he came across a gorgeous wolf. It was a noble beast with a thick winter pelt, muscles taught beneath the platinum fur and nonexistent stars glittering as if they had been woven into the undercoat. Her eyes were especially piercing, almost compelling. He felt that he would do anything for those eyes, should a wolf decide suddenly it wanted something from a human, and he realized suddenly that in her left eye was a strange marking, like a teardrop and a shield. He drew a sword, not a sword he had ever imagined before nor seen in the material world, and sliced cleanly across the chest of the creature, barely scraping aside its fur. The created seam parted, fading the way stardust is blown across the heavens, and from the newly formed cavity emerged a woman with dark hair and infinite eyes, bearing the same brand as the wolf in the same eye. She was obscure, as if she were someone familiar but he could not pinpoint her exact features, yet she seemed grateful to him.

When he awoke, mind still scattered from the ethereal dream, Lucina was at the window, gazing longingly into the woods. She was speaking softly, perhaps to herself but he found it odd that her musing voice was just audible enough to be detected.

"Perhaps in a few years it will be safe, though," she commented, replying to someone he had not heard speak. "Not enough to openly proclaim my identity, but I could walk the streets without a hood. Their revolutionary is likely a tyrant, too. But... There were so many rebels, it will be hard to know how they still view us. And the wolf..."

"Should I know what this means?" He rose from the bed and stepped respectfully towards her. "There are no streets or rebels here."

"Ah." She jumped a bit at his voice, but could not conceal her pleased smile. "No, this is all things from my past. From the city where I was born. If you knew any of it I would be genuinely surprised."

"Perhaps I am interested in learning."

"Perhaps." She chuckled and so did he, softly, and when she turned her eyes back upon him he was drawn towards them magnetically, stirrings of his dream rising once more. "But talking is not for a man like you. I know now you respond best to physical cues."

After she had kissed him-he still was unable to believe it had truly happened-he had been tuned to her wavelength, the human one he normally could not comprehend, and she manipulated him with wisps of contact from the tips of her fingers until he was laying down and she was pressed against his chest for comfort until the pains of transformation took her in the night. He had never been malleable in such a way before, but she was an excellent craftsman. It was almost embarrassing, to succumb to caressing and allow that to be his thoughts and actions, but he had justified himself after the fact because he had such limited and undesirable contact with humans otherwise. Before, his life had been black and white; he had to satisfy his own basic needs to survive, or else join his father in whatever hell existed for alphas, and now there was a silver median between the two. He could choose life, death, or the peculiar purgatory that existed between them and Lucina named love.

"Your face is turning red," she teased, stepping past the respectful barrier so that she was intimately close to him. "There is no reason to feel any shame, woodsman. Ignorance only means there is room to be taught."

"You will be teaching me a long time, then." Because of her proximity he felt it safe to brush the smoothest part of his cracked and calloused hand across her cheek, attempting to hide from her eyes at the same time because they seemed to do almost as much directing as her poking. "Are many people like this?"

"Ignorant? Of course. And many of them are too ignorant to be saved, but it is not their fault. You learn to forgive them, or else ignore them entirely." She caught his hand before it could return to his side and held it instead to her cheek.

"I meant like you." He lacked the eloquence to choose his words carefully. "Soft."

Her nails scratched at his healing burn as if to warn him, but it did not hurt. "I am not soft."

"Your skin is. And the way you talk to me." Every word from his mouth felt foreign, spoken by a stranger with his voice, and he barely comprehended them himself.

"Oh." This was far less insulting, and she smiled tranquilly at him, her scratching becoming rubbing. "No, not many people are like this. But not many people are like you, either, and I think that is what I like about you." She removed his hand at last and held it between her own, her padded palms barely encasing his fingers. "Of course, it is not the only thing. But enough talking, I can see you are confused. What would you like to do today?"

"Teach me something. What is it you village people do when you are not occupied by other troubles?"

"I suppose," her vivid eyes flashed, "we should explore and you can tell me all the legends of the woods."

"They have no legends," he replied, puzzled. "These are just woods."

"Surely you have stories of them to share. People you have found, strange and mythical beasts, anything."

"I could tell you of how I met a werewolf." Suddenly he thought of the one story he could tell. "I could tell you about the day my father died."

"Is it a legend?" She released his hand and tilted her head.

"Of sorts. Once I tell it, though, you have to rewrite it to be a better story. My talking is not the best."

"Alright, then. Tell me this story."

For quite some time he recounted to her the tale, when his father had brought them into the forest and they had built a cabin and lived there for years, but when Priam had seen only eleven winters his father had left, gone into the woods without a word. Priam waited, hoping the man would return any day, and in the meantime he checked the snares and learned to repair them, and fetched his own water and wood, and when winter settled that year he had finally braved the woods in search of his father, finding his bow on a trail. The next expedition on the following day led him all the way to the summer den of a great hulking bear, who was not yet in hibernation, and he had fought off the creature with wit and his father's bow, but the beast lumbered away and lived. The third day he returned to the now abandoned den and discovered bones strewn about its floor, and only the skull of a man allowed him to identify his father. It was tragic but Priam had not mourned; his father had existed in the black world of death long before the bear took his life. He brought the bones that were undeniably his father's outside, unsure of what to do with them, and when he returned on the fourth day with a plan, it had snowed and he never found the bones after that. When he concluded the tale, Lucina's eyes were misty but she was nodding pensively.

"That is a legend," she agreed, taking a seat on the floor of the cabin beside the coals from a recent fire. "The only thing that needs to be written is the part where you fight the bear again and defeat it once and for all."

"I think that the bear is something else now."

"What do you mean?"

He told her vaguely of his dream, and concluded, "I think that the thing I need to defeat is not the bear. It was, but now it is something different."