Fate's Games

Ill Met By Moonlight

She went there expecting a monster, some vile creature or crazy man. What she saw was nothing of the sort. In the pit stood a man, just a man. Only a man. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a Nord most likely, nearly stripped say for the ragged trousers he wore… And she wanted to hate him. She wanted to hate him so badly. So, so badly that words could not express it.

ES

"Our daughter. Our little girl. She hadn't seen her tenth winter." She regretted ever asking the man who it was that they mourned in the graveyard.

"How did she die?"

"She was… He ripped her apart. Like a sabre cat tears a deer. We barely found enough of her to bury."

"Who did this?" she had hissed through tears, feeling ill.

"Sinding. Came through as a laborer. Seemed like a decent man. He's stewing in the pit while we figure out what to do with him, if you've got the stomach to look at him. What could drive a man to do something like this?"

ES

"Come to gawk at the monster?" this Sinding questioned her in resignation.

"I hear you attacked a little girl," she answered.

"Believe me, it wasn't anything I ever intended to do. I just… lost control," he replied, voice cracking slightly, and she was surprised. When did a monster feel remorse? "I tried to tell them but, none of them believe me. It's all on account of this blasted ring."

"What ring?" she asked.

"This is the ring of Hircine. I was told it could let me control my transformations. Perhaps it used to, but I'll never know. Hircine didn't care for my taking it, and threw a curse on it," he answered almost catatonically. "I put it on and the changes just… came to me. I could never guess when. It would be at the worst times. Like… with the little girl."

The more she spoke to this man the more her image of him crumbled. Monster had become victim. Victim became slave, and she almost dreaded to ask as she gradually became lost in his eyes. "What kind of transformations?"

The words he spoke next, the tone he used, destroyed her defenses, and for a moment she felt only pity. He answered in hardly more than a whisper, "I don't suppose there's a point in keeping it secret if I'm going to die in here anyway." And then he proceeded to tell her. Werewolf. This man was a werewolf! And he went on. In tears he confessed to her in full everything, told her that he wanted to beg the Daedric Prince for forgiveness. Before she could think she had told him she would take the ring.

The young man's eyes filled with emotion she had never seen before in anyone, and it touched something inside of her deeply. "You would do this for me?" he asked her. She barely nodded, swallowing over a lump in her throat. Would she regret this choice? Perhaps; but there was something about the man. In his eyes she read only honesty. Honesty and desperation… and fatigue. He was tired, exhausted. The curse, slowly it was ripping him apart, torturing him. And then in a flash he was gone with a vow that the next time they met, she would be safe from him. He had climbed from the prison without a word more.

ES

She hardly heard the guard accuse her as she went out, as she killed the white deer, as Hircine appeared before her and tasked her to kill the man she had only just now vowed to help. What could she do? She went to the glade where to which Sinding had escaped and she tracked him down until suddenly… Suddenly from above came a voice. "Never thought I'd see you again."

She caught her breath and looked sharply up. Her eyes widened in awe as she gazed upon the werewolf outlined against the fiery red glow of the moon. Chills ran up and down her spine. It was him… It was him… And she admitted to him what she had been tasked, "I've been told to kill you."

She'd never expected his reply, not for a moment. "And I would deserve it, wouldn't I?" he asked. She didn't know why it happened; she wasn't sure she wanted to know why, but she felt tears falling silently from her eyes as she watched him there, so regal, so noble, so ready to die if need be. It hurt… It hurt her to see… "I can't stop you if that's what you want to do. Hircine is too powerful…" In that moment she longed to fall to her knees and beg Hircine to remove this task from her, to plead for this creature, this man's, life, or to have the werewolf kill her by his own hands and release her from this choice that she had never begun to believe could be so hard to make.

He swore to her then, beneath the blood red moon, that if she spared him he would be a powerful ally to her, that he would never again return to civilized life, that he knew now that a civilized life, a normal life, was no more in his grasp. It had been robbed from him long ago. It must have been the single bravest thing she had ever heard in her life. He was willing to isolate himself from any and all protection, live alone, taken from all he knew and loved; to become the monster he had tried so hard to fight off… He would give up everything to spare the lives of the innocent, and she sensed that, if need be, that would include his life. Tears silently fell from her eyes and she knew. She had fallen in love with him…

ES

He sensed her sadness and distress, he could smell it, hear it, feel it. Don't… oh please, don't cry; do not pity me. Lady, I do not deserve such mercy. Please, do not weep for me. And then she spoke, chilling his blood with her nightingale voice. "I will spare you," she swore.

"Thank the gods," he breathed in relief. Before he had finished speaking the rest of his sentence, she was there next to him, hand gently placed on his fur, stroking it absently in fascination. He waited a moment. She looked up into his eyes and nodded softly, and when she ran he could do nothing but follow. To let her out of his sight for even a moment… The very thought frightened him. To see her dancing amongst the hunters like a born huntress drew him all the nearer; and when they were done, he dreaded to hear her goodbye.

"The last of the hunters is dead," she declared. What could he say? What could he say but to renew his vow to her? He would make his home here far from civilized life, as he swore. And if nothing else the image of her would drive him to stay here for eternity, because the thought of ever hurting her, ever betraying her mercy, pained him more than it had any right to. Let her voice and image play through his mind over and over and over until he went mad with misery or died of a broken heart, because he knew at that moment that he had fallen in love with the woman standing in front of him. He bowed his head and turned, walking away. He felt her eyes on him; then all at once she was there. "You will not be alone here," she vowed to him. "And if I cannot find a cure for you, I will join you."