Chapter 15

The vague whispering of trees floated through the night air on faerie wings, flitting to and fro across the tiny pocket of bare-leafed forest. Full in the sky, the moon glowed down, washing everything in a bleach-blue tint and weaving an eerie, empty feel into the air.

Amidst the dead tree trunks, there was no undergrowth; no place for small animals to hide from the cold, still air that permeated everything. The forest was a barren wasteland.

Within an old, hollowed out tree rested a wolf. Her ragged, yellow figure was nestled in a pile of humus and dead leaves, paws in the air and mouth hanging open. There was hardly any room for her, visible by her back legs vertical up against the trunk wall and her head squished into a rotten corner. Occasionally, she whimpered and twitched in a dream.

And then, Citegrene came to life. She woke as she always did, with a simple snap into consciousness, followed by the slight relief to escape from the nightmares that dominated her REM cycles. But the emotions lingered even while she was awake. It was impossible to escape the black pit that consumed her every time she laid her head to rest.

A breeze ghosted through the trees nearby, the murmur of gently swishing branches reaching the she-wolf's rounded ears. With a mental barricade blocking all thoughts, she automatically got up from the leaf litter and shook her shaggy pelt.

Outside, the intensely cold air created swirls of frost as Citegrene breathed. She raised her muzzle to the moon and howled out in agony. The horrible, gut-wrenching emotions were lessened when she howled so, as if she gave a small piece of her pain to the winking stars above. Its pitch rose and fell in undulations, ending on a sad note that resonated through her being. She gazed up, almost wishing for a response to her cry.

The crispness of the night made the stars stand out brightly in contrast with the black space wrapped around them. Twinkling, they showed nothing to indicate that they had heard Citegrene's desperate howl. They made her feel so small and insignificant. So alone.

Robotically, the she-wolf stiffly padded through the white-washed forest, noticing how everything dead looked so wonderful under the moon. Citegrene quickly stifled that thought. She couldn't allow herself to think.

When she breached the treeline, she couldn't help but marvel at the glossy black lake before her, adorned by shifting mirrors of luminosity on the wave crests. Light kept reflecting off of the caps as they tossed and turned gently in a breeze, each ray of white winking in and out of existence as the waves calmly tumbled over one another.

Slowly, careful to suppress all thought, Citegrene padded across the white sands to the lake's edge. She bent to lap expressionlessly at the water, ignoring the tingling in her paws as the waves frisked about them, ignoring the cold wind ruffling through her fur, ignoring her brain's attempt to breach the No-Thinking rule.

When her thirst was slaked, the she-wolf sat back on her haunches, briefly admiring the sparkle of water clinging to her feet before she snuffed out the thought. Her dull gaze swept once again over the dark, bleak horizons all around her, broken only by the lake, the small wood behind her, and the light snowfall now coming down.

Citegrene . . .

Whispered, the call startled her onto her feet, anger flashing through her veins.

"What!?" Citegrene barked sharply, her voice cracking from little use. "What do you want!?"

As soon as the words left her muzzle, the bitter wind picked up speed, blasting icy shards into Citegrene's narrowed eyes. They crinkled in agitation as a growl ripped from her throat in surprise. Far off in the distance was a dark figure, moving towards the lake. Her lake. Her woods. Her territory.

Why can't you come? I really want you there with me. The tenor voice resonated around Citegrene's skull, smooth in its pleading.

A hysterical laugh ripped from the she-wolf's muzzle, all the while her gaze trained on the approaching shape. Now she was hearing voices, and responding to them, too. That definitely breached the No-Thinking rule.

Why, Citegrene? Why can't you come?

Her lipped curled as she watched the figure getting closer. Soon it would be close enough to act. Should she slip back into the forest unseen? Or should she stay on the bank and defend her territory?

Why . . . can't . . . you . . . come . . . Each word fell deeper in pitch.

"Get out of my head, you mangy, dirt-eating coward."

Citegrene . . . that's not a good enough answer.

"Then what is? This?" Citegrene swore through her long list of expletives that she had prepared for a moment like this.

That's quite a collection of words you have there, honey. Almost enough to rival mine.

Citegrene's body shivered with anger. "Don't call me honey, you reckless, artistically obsolete excuse for a mutt! I don't belong to you! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" She screamed the last sentence to the approaching shape as well, her fury boiling over.

The figure's course didn't alter as it steadily advanced towards the lake, the sound of cracking snow coming into hearing as it approached. Citegrene inhaled sharply, then roared in one breath, "StaybackI'mwarningyouifyoucomeanycloserI'llripyourthroatout!!"

The crunching snow stopped. Citegrene blinked an annoying flake out of her eye, straining to see who stood in the darkness of the distance.

Citegreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeene . . . The voice was a deep, menacing growl now, unforgiving in its threatening lure.

The she-wolf snarled viciously in response. Who did this clown think he was? Normally, his voice was a relief, a break from the monotony as he rattled on in a one-way conversation. But not today. She had responded to the voice for the first time. What a mistake. It had responded by annoying the hell out of her.

Citegrene peered into the darkness, her anger mixed with confusion and curiosity. The shape wavered slightly in her vision, a dark mist that couldn't be focused on. It started forward again, its weight crushing through the hard snow.

Citegrene's hackles bristled as she all but screamed, "Stay back! No one is allowed on MY territory!"

The steady crunching continued.

"I WILL FRICKIN' KILL YOU IF YOU SO MUCH AS PUT ONE MORE FOOT FORWARD!!"

Silence fell.

Someone laughed. It was a dark, horrifying laugh that echoed inside Citegrene's skull, never having been spoken audibly. She locked her gaze on the figure, her once-bristling fur flat, her ears pulled back in fear, and her legs shaking violently.

Oh, come on now, honey. You don't need to be afraid . . .

"What did you do, Rekoj? Get out of my head!"

Oohhhh, so it's just your head that you are worried about . . . I see that we'll have to change that.

Suddenly, the she-wolf's legs buckled, seemingly of their own accord, and the snow rushed up to meet her face. "Dammit," she breathed into the ground.

Anger left her as swiftly as it had come. She lay there for a few minutes, tensed for the unknown. After several minutes of nothing but snow melting in her fur, she collected her derailed thoughts and wobbled to her feet. The first sight that met her eyes was the unbroken horizon. There was no black shape. That wasn't possible. She would have heard whatever it was leave.

Citegrene . . .

She snorted, shaking her head in an attempt to rid it of the utterance. The very whisper of it sent chills down her spine, and memories flashing through her head. Horrible, horrible memories that she didn't want to have to think about. Memories of a burning flame, a best friend, and a Flower Maiden.

Citegrene . . .

"Gawd dammit, GO AWAY!" Citegrene whirled and pelted headlong into the forest. The trees rushed past in a blur, her mind wishing that she ran into one while her body instinctively swerved away. There was no ambiance that accompanied a normal forest, only the hard sound of her footfalls as she flew through the pocket of woods and into the surrounding wastelands of drifting snow.

Citegrene instantly skidded to a halt, huffing out crystal clouds. She had never gone beyond the borders of the forest, only on the lake side. She had never had reason to until now. Whatever the voice was, it was linked to the forest, for she had never heard it before she had arrived at this Tor-forsaken place.

With a quick backwards glance, the she-wolf launched herself into the desert of white. Instantly, her paws cracked through the thin layer of hardened top snow and she sank in up to her chest. It seemed like there was more snow on the ground these days, no matter where Citegrene was.

Sighing in annoyance, she picked her back feet up and plunged them through as well, struggling to keep moving forward as her already-toppled mental barrier crumbled into minute particles of dust.

"Eneres," Citegrene called into the night. "Come here, Eneres! I have something to tell you! Ah, there you are. How old are they? Is it their second year now? My my, how time passes - oh, Eneres, wait! Come back!" There was nothing but swirling snow and wind to answer her.

Citegrene trudged on, lost in her own pool of insanity as she held aimless conversations with the frigid air, talking about everything from how much humans smelt to the nutritional value of a cockroach.

When she finally fell, dark gray clouds had completely blanketed the sky. Citegrene lay crumpled from dehydration on the top layer of snow, her eyelids drooping with exhaustion.

After a while, Citegrene could numbly feel something hard underneath the snow on which she lay. Her body ached from lying on it for so long, and she shifted her weight slightly. Her lethargic gaze slid across the stone block in front of her, not registering it. Her vision trailed upwards, taking in the massive gray flight of steps that reached towards the heavens. Barely visible in her sight was a regal stone statue of a wolf suckling two human infants atop the landing.

Citegrene sighed, utterly exhausted. Her gaze dropped once more to the ground. She blurredly saw the white landscape before her, looking like burnt silver in the darklight, an endless sea of nothingness in which the blizzard winds whipped about.

Slowly, her parched lips moved to form words, words that she had tried to forget once.

"When the world is burnt and dying; when there's no refuge to be found . . ." She breathed heavily, then whispered, "From past sins and . . . fatal lying, then great evil . . . shall . . . abound . . ." Her voice trailed off.

What was the point of life? There was no meaning if it was all one long path in which she just kept walking and walking, going nowhere. And now she would die in the frigid wilderness as the world collapsed in upon itself. Wolfbane's Winter, it was called in the old stories, stories of how Paradise would be opened when the moon was blood red.

But how could there be a Paradise at all if she had tried so hard, yet failed? Surely, because she had given it her all, she would have found it. That's the way things were supposed to work.

The she-wolf grievously wished that Eneres was with her now. Her whole life, she had lived with her adopted sister at her side, until that one day when the forest went up in flames, and Citegrene's life along with it.

Where had Cheza gone to? She wondered where Darcia had stolen her away to, never to be found, along with his little pupil, Rekoj. No doubt teaching him the art of genocide and Tor knows what else.

And what of Natas? Would she ever be able to die peacefully, with the strange feelings she had first felt for him, yet denied, untainted by thoughts of his rumored betrayal? Is that why she kept walking down the path of life, searching for an answer? Was it all for something as changing as love, as fleeting as a Paradise?