Wolfsbane gazed across the silent moors from her position on top of the hills above Ullapool. It was near midnight, and pitch black to human eyes, but she could still see clearly from the background infrared radiation that never quite leaves, even during the darkest nights. There wasn't a lot to see apart from the rolling hills and the quietly moving waters of Loch Broom, but it was her home, her territory. It was time to reclaim it as hers.
The wolf took a deep breath, savouring the smells of the world around her. She could distinguish the various types of heather beneath her paws, the slight tinge of wood smoke from the fires of the town below, the individual scents of the sheep in the paddock below her, even the path which Russell MacLachlan had taken when he'd climbed the hill that morning. Her ears picked up the distant cry of a barn owl and the battering of the waves against the cliffs out to the west. She shook her shoulders, as if to slip the landscape on as a second coat.
On the kind of instinctual impulse that governed her when she let the wolf form take over, Wolfsbane began to run. This was freedom, a feeling she'd never quite been able to recreate at the Xavier Institute with its rules, limits, and most of all geographical boundaries. The highlands might be stifling and boring in human form when compared to America, but they gave the wolf space to roam. And she did, feeling more alive than she had been for months….
She ran west, over the Coigach peninsula, without any destination in mind, or indeed any thoughts at all except the thrill of travelling. The wolf finally pulled up when she reached the cliffs at Rhu Coigach some ten miles away. The breakers rolled in and pounded against the rock wall below her and a light wind whipped the heather around on its way out to sea. Looking up she could see a crescent moon glowing above her. There was one thing that wolves, especially werewolves must do in response to the moon. She raised her head toward the sky, took a deep breath, and sent the age old lupine salute to whatever lunar gods might be present. The howl was caught by the breeze and carried out past the headland, over the black waters of the Minch. Perhaps it even reached the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, perhaps not. Nevertheless, Wolfsbane continued….
.....
Rahne woke up back in her own room. Stifling a yawn, she turned to look at the alarm clock that was sitting beside her bed. The cheery little face showed it was 11.30am. What the…? How late had she been last night to sleep in this long? She tried to scramble out of bed at speed in order to get up as quickly as possible, but only succeeded in getting herself tangled up in the sheets and falling onto the floor.
Eventually, after changing to a far more dignified (and manageable) pace, Rahne made it downstairs. She found her mother in the kitchen, already busy with some kind of cooking.
"Did you have a nice sleep?" she asked as Rahne made herself a bowl of porridge. "It's a bit late for breakfast by now, isn't it darling?"
"I just got up, so it's breakfast time," she replied between mouthfuls.
"At quarter to twelve? Slow down dear, don't wolf your food…."
Rahne looked up quizzically, not quite believing that her mother had actually used that particular phrase. "What?" asked Mrs Sinclair. "What did I say?"
"Don't wolf your food? Seriously mum, I thought you were above puns."
"What…. Oh, I'm sorry darling, slip of the tongue." Rahne nodded, saying nothing further, although she couldn't help but wonder if the 'slip' was something more. Her nose said it wasn't, she knew it wasn't, but still… the worry remained.
"In any case," her mother continued, "why were you so late up this morning? Did you pick up the habit from the Institute?"
Aye, the Institute was just full of sloth and sleeping in, thought Rahne, what with the five-thirty wake-up calls for Danger Room sessions and all. But she didn't mention it to her mother, because it made her parents uncomfortable and protective when she talked about her training at the Institute. Instead she deflected the question, "I just sort of slept in a bit late," she said, and returned to her porridge. She also hadn't told them about her late night runs as a wolf, knowing that they would make her stop them in the interests of keeping herself safe – she had no intention of giving up her only chance of some freedom in Ullapool.
Upon finishing her porridge Rahne got up to help her mother with the cooking for lunch, working in a comfortable silence that made it easy to forget about any awkwardnesses or topics that were off-limits. She was in the process of chopping up a large number of carrots when her father walked into the kitchen, stomping mud across the smooth vinyl floor.
"Ian!" exclaimed Mrs Sinclair. "Boots off before you come inside!" He was suitably chastised and stepped out the door to remove the offending footwear.
"Nice ta know ye missed me, Jenny," he said, perfectly straight-faced.
"Well, indeed!" she responded indignantly, but then softened her tone. "I was expecting you back much earlier - is there some kind of problem out on the moors?" Mr Sinclair was the head ranger of the National Park beside Ullapool, Assynt Coigach.
"Ye might say that" he replied. "MacLachlan found some of his sheep up by the coast this morning – he said it looked like they'd been ripped apart by some kind of wild animal…."
"Up by the coast? In Coigach?" asked Mrs Sinclair.
"Aye. Just a couple of miles from here."
Shocked, Rahne brought the knife down abruptly without looking at what she was supposed to be chopping, ending up with a neat slice across her index finger. "Ow!" she cried, and started sucking the injured hand.
Both parents turned at her exclamation. "Are ye alright there lass?" asked her father.
"Aye, I'm fine," she answered, after taking her hand out of her mouth. "I just missed the carrot." But her mind was racing – a wild animal killing sheep in Coigach, last night?
"You'd better do something for that hand," her mother fussed. "I'll go and get you a band-aid."
"Don't worry about it," Rahne told her.
"Don't worry about it? Rahne, that's quite a nasty cut you've got there – we've got to stop the bleeding!"
In response, Rahne held up her hand to her mother. The cut was still red and open, but the bleeding had already stopped and a clot was starting to form. "I heal faster than normal people, remember?" While she had no where near the regenerative power of Wolverine, she did heal at an accelerated rate.
Both her parents were staring at her hand, transfixed, and they did not smell particularly happy. While they loved her without question, their fear for her safety from bigots sometimes led them to almost try to ignore her mutation, as if to try to make it and all the problems it caused disappear through absence of attention. Rahne smiled weakly at them, with a hopeless sort of shrug, and received apologetic looks in return, which eventually melted into relieved smiles. Her parents were pleased at least, if not actually proud of her mutation. It was just that reminding them about it usually ended up making everything more uncomfortable.
.....
After lunch Rahne went outside to help her mother in the garden. And apparently their notion was not an atypical one, because in the garden next door was Claire's father, Reverend Craig.
"Nice day for it, Jenny," he remarked across the fence in a sombre tone that somehow seemed to be accusatory, as if he resented the sun for shining.
"That it is, Reverend," Mrs Sinclair replied. Her voice was not quite cool, but it didn't invite further conversation, although as usual, this was lost on the dour minister.
He then spotted Rahne. "Ah, and ye'd be helpin' your mother out in the garden. That's a good lass," he told her in a patronisingly paternal tone. Probably due to the living next door and being her best friend's father, Reverend Craig seemed to think he was some kind of surrogate father to Rahne, and never spared her from his sermonising advice.
"She's a great help," said her mother.
"And all the more so since she had a change of heart and gave up that silly notion of seeing the rest of the world, eh?" the minister said sternly. "Decided that America wasna so special when compared to Ullapool – those yanks just dinna compare to proper highland values…."
Rahne stared intently at the flower bed and tightened her lips to avoid giving a small growl. Reverend Craig's values mostly involved avoiding sin by removing any trace of pleasure, vitality or enjoyment from life – he'd heard about the austerity required by the Presbyterian church and tripled it to a point where even John Knox would have been telling him to lighten up. Not that even the old Calvinist reformer would have told Craig to his face – Ullapool's one and only minister was imposing to say the least, and he had never been known to brook argument.
Mrs Sinclair's easy-going outlook was also at odds with the churchman's model of piety, but she always managed to remain polite. "Yes, we decided that it would be much better for Rahne to be back home with her family," she said simply.
"Well it's all for the best," he told Rahne. "Anyway, Ullapool is quite an exciting place all by itself – did ye hear the news about MacLachlan's sheep, Jenny?" Rahne was forgotten in the interest of passing on the village gossip, although even that barely managed to make a dent in the solemn tone and dismal expression. Very little moved the Reverend to strong emotion. Except sin, of course.
"Yes, Ian told me they'd found a few bodies on the coast," Mrs Sinclair replied.
"Oh aye, but there's more than that, ye ken… they werena just killed – they were mutilated. Throats torn out, neat as ye please…." As he went on to describe in more graphic detail about the dead livestock, Rahne couldn't shake the annoying nagging thought that kept on popping up in her head: sheep killed up on Coigach by some kind of wild animal last night…. Why didn't she remember getting home?
NB: Reverend Craig is another figure I've lifted from the comics, with a few changes. One that played a very important role in Rahne's backstory in them, but I won't explain all that and give away my whole plot just yet to those of you who are new to it.
On other notes – absolutely no disrespect or the like is intended toward Christianity in general and the Presbyterian Church in particular by the characters and events in this fic. Really truly. I'm just being over-dramatic with a few details.
Loch Broom, Assynt Coigach and Rhu Coigach are real places, just like Ullapool, and the geography is pretty much like I described (yeah, I'm pedantic, I know).