Chase In The Morning, Howling Moon of the Red Talon tribe, made her way through the thick stand of pines with instincutal ease. Her white lupus form, accented with splashes of blood red, was as fast and as effortless as smoke. Each pawtrack was made with surety born of a deep seated sense of familarity.
The Fianna who trailed behind her, however, was not so fortunate. Aedryn, unlike Chase In the Morning, was homid born and unused to his wolf body. He wore the form now out of respect; the Howling Moon was doing him a favor by taking him here; most of the lupus who made up her notoriously intolerant tribe would not have bothered to even consider his request. And so he followed her through the forest on four ungainly paws, trying to ignore his discomfort as they went deeper and deeper, further from the civilization and rules he knew. Still, his quest to gather a story from each of the werewolf tribes about what they held sacred gave him the will to endure.
It seemed an eternity before Chase In The Morning drew to a halt. They had come to a small, wild clearing, and it was here the delicate, blue eyed wolf sat, regarding Aedyrn with an intellegence most Red Talons would never willingly show. She, however, considered him with a suprising insight, and when she spoke it was in a thoughtful way.
"Fianna wish to learn of a place sacred to the Talons, a place of importance and history. Then hear this wolf, and she will tell you that the whole of the forest is sacred to the Talons. Every tree, every leaf, every stream, every raindrop....all is sacred to the Talons, all comes from Mother Gaia, and to her it will all return. We are Her protectors, chosen to carry out the sacred duty of preserving the Wyld. Always will the Talons hold Gaia in their hearts, even when the others forget. This is our purpose, but it was not always so.
When Gaia first made the Changing Children, we roamed free across a land of purity such as no one alive today can imagine. Spirit and flesh were as one, and the shadow of the corrupted Wyrm did not yet darken our hearts. Wolves and humans played, hunted, lived and died as one pack; I know this for I have seen it in the spirit realms. There, wolves and apes are as one still, but it is a faded memory, a pale shadow of what once was.
Into this time of beauty and completness, jealousy came to root. The Weaver, fed up with her brother Wyrm destroying everything she had so meticulously spun, began to plan in the heart of her web, away from prying eyes. Working many days and nights, she spun cords as hard and unbreakable as any monkey metal, yet as flexible as a snake's body, able to coil and curl as her will directed. Many days she spun, putting all her time and effort into her craft, for her brother Wyrm was very large and powerful, that he might carry out his task as Destructor.
Then, when all was ready, Weaver crept as silent as death upon her borther as he slept, exhausted from his day's work. Casting the nets about him, she pulled them tight and he awoke with an angry roar, a roar that splintered the world of spirit and flesh forever. Surging against his bonds, his powerful head split, creating the three forces that pollute our world today, the Defiler, Beast of War, and Eater of Souls. As he writhed, trapped in agony within his evil sister's trap, his emotions fled outward, becoming evil spirits and Urges. These spirits delved into the hearts of the humans, already wounded by having their spirit halves ripped away. Willing to welcome any spirit to ease the agony in their souls, many allowed banes to corrupt them, turning away from Gaia and away from the wolf. Apes began to fear the Wyld, and tried to destroy it as the Weaver manipulated them and took the apes as her own children.
Gaia gathered all her Changing children to Her to choose a defender for her Wyld places, sensing that they would be lost if something was not done to curb the unnatural growth of the now poisoned humans. Testing the hearts of all gathered, she found that only Red Talon had kept himself pure, free of the Weaver and the Wyrm, and she set the great wolf at the edge of her territories, charging him with keeping the tainted apes from spoiling Her bounty. Ever since we have guarded her Wyld places, never forgetting our sacred duty as so many others have. So, when you ask for a single place sacred to the Talons, that I can't give you. Our sacred places are all the places of Gaia still Wyld and free."
Aderyn sat, transfixed by the mournful howlings of a wolf for who the End Times had already come. He could not speak, only hold her words close to his heart as he made his clumsy way from the clearing. Of all the tribes, the Talons had been the first to share their tale, and tears stood in his eyes as he padded away, unable to escape the vision of the world that once was, before the Apocalypse, before pain, before corruption.. A high pitched keen of mourning rose over the trees as Chase In The Morning sang her story for the very earth of Gaia, and for just a moment the wolf inside him sang with her.