A/N: A couple of shorts combined, since they're both on the same theme and neither one is really long enough to make its own chapter.
~ I ~
Twilight came early to the village of Waybridge at that season, the bitter, crisp air starting to yield to lonely darkness over the moor. It was a forlorn place, where the skeletons of solitary trees clawed against the darkening skies, and grim tors reared up like the fingers of some long-dead colossus. It was a season where farmers and shopkeepers were all too happy to finish their work and cluster in the taproom of the Black Dog Inn for a mug or three of strong ale or hot, mulled cider to keep out the chill.
The gathered drinkers to a man jolted in their seats as the door was flung open to crash loudly against the wall. Looking up in shock, they saw the wide-eyed, staring face of Vinson Labatt, one of the local carters who made his coin hauling local goods to the markets in the nearest town. Labatt's eyes were wide and staring, and the black stubble on his cheeks just made the pasty whiteness of his skin stand out all the more.
"I seen it!" he gasped, staggering forward. His sides heaved as he sucked in air, making it plain that he had run some distance. "Out on the moor!"
"Seen what, Vin? What's got you in such a state?" asked the innkeeper. He filled a mug with ale and set in on the bar; Labatt collapsed onto the stool in front of it.
"The Black Dog!" Labatt seized the tankard in shaking hands, lifted it to his lips, and downed half of its contents in one gulp. His trembling eased, and he wiped the back of his sleeve across his lips. "Big as a horse it was, with blazing eyes and breath like fire! It stared right at me and barked twice. It's an omen, I tell you!"
Labatt's story had a somewhat curious effect on his host. The innkeeper straightened up, his casual air vanishing to be replaced with a resolute sense of purpose. He strode to the kitchen door, thrust it open, and called, "Margery! Put another roast on, and use the best, mind. Also a pot of tea, and when Peg gets back in with the water have her go make up two rooms."
He was grinning when he turned back to Labatt.
"Your black dog's an omen all right, Vin. It's an omen that the Mage Consul's on her way to visit her family, with her lady and their daughter and their servant besides." He rubbed his hands together. "The gentry's good custom if you treat 'em right, 'specially at this time of year."
"But the Dog—" Labatt began, only to be cut off with a laugh.
"You dunderhead, that's just the little girl's pup! Probably wanted you to throw him a stick. Poor boy; dogs get devilish hurt feelings when people don't like 'em."
~ II ~
It was a dark and dreary autumn night, the kind of night when one wants to huddle close to the fire not for the heat, but because the soul craved for light to drive out the darkness. The traveling merchant felt it, spending much of his time staring into the flames whenever the act of eating did not specifically require him to look down at his food.
Even so, he thought he would have jerked in his seat at the sudden howling were it a bright summer's day, so dreadful was the sound.
It came from outside the inn, but it sounded close by, a deep-throated voice that was a paean to loneliness and loss. The merchant shuddered as the sound seemed to claw at his spirit, a plague of despairing sorrow that mocked all hope, all joy of life.
"Good Lord, what was that?" he gasped.
"Ah, that be the howl o' the Black Dog, the barghest," said an old gaffer at the bar. "They do say that when its howl rings out across the moor, that it be an omen o' death. Take me word for it, the Auld Man do be whetting his scythe."
Even as he finished, the howl began once again, and the traveler cringed. The noise was cut off, though, by a window banging open upstairs and a little girl's voice calling out.
"Shuck, be quiet! Mama said you have to sleep outside unless it rains because the inn isn't fireproof, so stop carrying on like that. You'll disturb people's sleep!"
An almost apologetic "mrowf" answered the girl.
"Good boy. I'll see if I can get a piece of bacon for you in the morning."
The old gaffer gave the merchant a gap-toothed grin.
"Well, I be right about the barghest part, anyways."