THE SHE-WOLF AND THE RAVEN

Chapter 11: Mountain

Chapter warning: this chapter is a bit heavy on the angst and will involve some accounts of minor character deaths. Think MCU level of hardships.

"One day K'wati was walking up and down the earth when he learned that some people had captured the sun and had hidden it in a box. Those people only let the sun shine enough to light their own territory as they needed it. All the other people on earth were in darkness. K'wati said, 'I will rescue the sun, so that all people can have light.'

K'wati steals the Sun

Oooooooo

Seth came over with a box of Fruit Loops in hand, his face so engulfed in his grin that it was a wonder he had space left for his cheeks.

"Breakfast of champions!" he said to her as he gave her the box and lifted her a foot off the ground in a bone-crushing embrace. She collapsed into the warmth and familiarity that clung to his scent and the feel of that hug and was all wrapped up in the essence of Seth.

"You mean the breakfast dad only let us have when mom was working," she answered with a laugh. "Too bad we can't spend the morning watching Power Rangers."

"Oh, but we can!" he answered and he plopped down cross-legged on the green carpet. He pulled out his phone and some cords and fiddled with the ancient TV, his eyes squinting in concentration. After a few minutes, the theme song to the old kids' show blared into the living room. "Just like old times!" he declared proudly with his arms wide open and motioning to the TV.

"You're the best!" she said as she brought over bowls and spoons and milk. They crunched happily on the over-sweetened cereal and she couldn't help but relax into the tiny slice of nostalgia that washed over her. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine their dad wrapping fishing lures at the table and reminding them not to spill their milk on the carpet.

"Where's the fam?" Seth asked…as he spilled milk from his spoon and onto the well-stained carpet.

"Hunting. They left early this morning with their dad to go run the forests and see if they could come up with a breakfast they found more satisfying. They said bagels 'weren't real food' and, yeah, in wolf form, I gotta agree."

"No argument here," he said with a shrug. "Those wolf metabolisms are bottomless pits. My grocery bill dropped like 75% when I stopped phasing."

Leah froze mid-spoon and stared at her brother. He continued eating, pausing only to laugh at whatever was happening on the brightly-colored screen.

"When?" she asked.

"Umm, yeah, I guess about four years ago," he answered, turning to stare at his Fruit Loops instead of her fixed stare. He pushed the loops around a few times and failed to bring any to his mouth.

"Why?" she asked.

"Come on, Lee, after everything that happened here? Our mad wolf skills were useless to protect anyone. All the people I cared about were gone…or at least I thought they were at the time. I didn't want to stick around forever like that," Seth answered. His usual cheerfulness evaporated into a grief so foreign to his countenance that Leah's breath escaped her and she fell back onto the ground, her appetite suddenly gone.

"I can't regret it though," he said. He finally met her gaze with his own forced smile, though his eyes were still tinged with sadness around the edges. "It'd be time now anyway. I'm getting married. I want to raise my own family and not have to worry about any of this anymore."

After everything that happened here.

Everything that happened in her absence.

Once again, she felt like she was dancing around the edge of a great chasm, so covered in mist she could not see where it began or ended. Each time her feet meandered closer to the edge, a chorus of voices rang out around her in furious whispers, warning her to step back, to get as far away as she could, that she could never un-know what lay beneath.

It reminded her of her fifth grade field trip. She watched from the school bus window as the forest gradually shifted from ancient trees to an arboreal graveyard. The blasted remnants of the once vibrant forest lay like discarded toothpicks around Mount St. Helens. In an uncanny harmony, the corpses of trees lay prostrate in homage to the might of the mountain that felled them.

For years after that field trip, every time their family drove past Mt. Rainier, Leah insisted on covering her head with a pillow-convinced that towering mountain would be the next to erupt. Her mother tried to explain that a pillow wouldn't protect her in case of a true reawakening of the mountain, but this hardly comforted her and it made her even more diligent in her efforts to bury her head in her pillow. She was still haunted by the idea that mountains could suddenly explode overnight. They seemed so ageless, changeless and yet when they decided to change, nothing could stop them.

On that field trip, seventeen years after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, she could still see the impact and feel in awe of the power of the earth to transform mountain and forest, lakes and streams in an instant. The immediate aftermath of the eruption buried the surrounding lands in ash and blotted out the sun, the sky now shone clear and bright. While the ash had washed away in the perennial rains and trees, plants, and animals were returning to reclaim the forest in the shadow of the mountain, the skeletal remains of the old forest failed to let the memory of that day be completely erased.

She remembered how Granny Grace said the land held memories. It was in those days, long before fifth grade, when Leah's job was to keep Granny company and hand her grasses for her ever-present basket weavings.

"T'siqati," Granny said as she motioned around her with her wrinkled, calloused hand, "is the land-both what can be seen and what cannot be seen. It is t'siqati that sings and teaches us our songs. It creates us and sustains us and is part of us.

"T'siqati remembers. It is alive with what is and what has been and what will be. No matter how men carve their legacies in stone and wood and blood, the greatest of chiefs and the most heroic of men, the strongest of peoples and the greatest of victories-all will vanish like mist from the sea. Those that walk t'siqati after them will forget, or erase, the old memories in their eagerness to carve their own, but the t'siqati's remembers. The great and strong and mighty will all be washed away with time, buried and forgotten by all who live except t'sqati, where their bones lay. We were made here and we will die here and then we find all this is but a shadow of the real land that is to come."

Leah had been too young to understand what Granny spoke of. As she aged and the lines between past and present, legend and reality blurred, she saw those afternoons with Granny with more appreciation than she had ever had as a girl.

She couldn't help but feel, as she edged ever closer into womanhood, that she spent her life dancing around the toppled remains of a ghost forest, haunted by the memories whispered by t'sigati of what had once been. While her birth occurred long after the eruption had occurred, lingering echoes of a life that had once been remained interwoven in the quiet stories, old memories, names of places, and long sighs caught in the eyes of their elders. She knew the forest she grew in was different than it had once been, though she did not fully understand how. She also knew the change had been as forceful and as rapid as the one that befell the shadow of St. Helens.

No matter how the forest and the creatures in the forest regrew, the t'siqati remained a palimpsest, whispering long displaced stories of the past through the memories it carried in earth and stone, bone and spirit, wood and water, to anyone willing to sit quietly enough to listen.

In five words, Seth made her feel like that ten year old girl, staring out at the destroyed forest and the yawning crater of the mountain, listening to stories written long before her first day of life.

After everything that happened here.

Coming away from the bonfire on First Beach the night before, Leah had felt the same way. What great eruption had occurred in her absence? She felt the change permeate everything and everyone around her, but she could not tell the cause, only that all the trees lay prostrate in the same direction, facing away from some great, shared catastrophe.

It wasn't one particular event that gave her this impression, but more of an overall knitting together of moments. There were the subtle glances and less subtle absences, the comments and the noticeable withholding of answers.

The first "not quite right" inkling she had occurred when she walked into her childhood home. Her mother had been planning to sell it once Seth moved onto college. She hardly needed two homes after her marriage to Charlie and Seth had big plans to settle in Seattle and work for one of the big tech companies there. Yet, so many years later, the house remained unlived in but also untouched by years.

Then there was Charlie. The last nine years had turned his hair snow white. He was too frail, too thin, and she did not miss the tears that streamed down his usually stoic cheeks as he embraced her, and held onto her a bit longer than he ever had before. His shuffling walk looked as though each of the years she had been gone had pressed another barrel of concrete on his shoulders and he could barely hold up under them all.

Leah's mouth almost fell open when Emily pointed out their third child. Leah had been there for his first birthday. The bright, vivacious boy she had known should have turned ten already, but the boy she saw barely looked a day older than his six year old brother. In fact, his younger brother was taller and more verbose than he. She would have considered it a fluke, except for Paul's daughter. The girl barely looked more than a few years older than Leah had last seen her.

Then there was the meaningful glance that Billy gave Embry when she asked about Jared and Quil. Embry quickly dodged her questions and changed the subject, an apology written plainly in his eyes.

She noticed it in the way Sam clung to Emily as if he were afraid she would vanish any moment. His eyes were trained on her as if he couldn't believe she were real. Leah would have considered it a typical imprint thing, except for the quiet edge of desperation that his eyes now contained…or the way Charlie's eyes held the same edge…and how it was shared by Paul's wife.

It was the guitar that really cemented the impression. While everyone ate and the chatter of human voices hummed across the beach, Sam's oldest daughter, Melanie, sat with a group of teenagers. Her light plucking of string on her dad's guitar could faintly be heard behind the crackling of the bonfire, the rush of the waves, and the sounds of the gathering. She stopped with wide eyes when Sam stood and came behind her and joined her song. He gave her an apologetic smile and then motioned to the guitar. She slowly handed it to him and he sat on a chair and began to play old Beatles tunes, as he had done every bonfire since he first learned to play. Yet, this time all conversations around the bonfire stopped as all eyes fixed on Sam.

For the first few verses of "Yesterday," Sam sang alone, ignoring both the stares and the silence. By the final chorus, his daughter joined him-the only other voice brave enough to break the spell that had fallen across the party. Leah glanced around in confusion, only to notice that nearly every member of the pack was fighting back tears and some did not bother to fight but let them freely run down their cheeks unguarded-a sight she had never beheld in all her years with the pack.

By the time Sam shifted to playing "Let It Be," Embry and Seth joined in, quickly followed by all others who were present. When he finished with "Here Comes the Sun," not a dry eye remained. Couples stood close, hands intertwined, children pulled close and quiet, as if they were all singing church hymns instead of Beatles tunes. The sanctity of the moment did not end with the final pluck of guitar strings but lingered in the glances and touches, solemn whispers and sighs that followed as the completed song still held them entranced.

"It's good to hear your songs again, Sam," Billy said, effectively breaking the spell of whatever magic had fallen over them. A collective sigh was breathed as eyes met with eloquently shared stories and Sam handed the guitar back to his daughter, giving her a kiss on the forehead and wiping the tears from her cheeks as he did. He gave her a heavy smile and she placed a quick hug around his neck. Emily's hand quietly fell upon his shoulder and he pulled her in even closer and covered his face in the waist of her dress. Stilted, uncomfortable conversations attempted to hide the sobs that silently shook the great shoulders of the alpha wolf.

Leah couldn't help staring and wondering why people were reacting in such a manner. All these inklings crept under her skin and made her itch with an unease she couldn't shake.

She had been gone too long. She could feel it. She had missed something momentous and it left her even more on the fringes of the fabric of their social life than she had been before she left. Now she was an outsider, observing from afar the pack's efforts to rebuild after whatever "something" had occurred.

Though she dreaded the answer, she needed to know what that "something" was.

"Seth, what happened here?" she finally asked. She failed to notice any more of the Power Rangers episode and instead watched Seth's expressions, waiting for him to put words to what she had felt but could not define.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You all keep mentioning 'what happened' as if there's some big, dramatic event that occurred that everyone knows about. I have no idea what it is," she said.

"Leah, have you been living under a rock?"

"Ummm, basically, yeah."

Seth whistled and shook his head. "Wow. Where do I even start?"

"Did those vamps come back?" she asked, her eyes growing wide. "Was there another conflict with the Volturi?"

"No, no. It wasn't that. Actually, it took out a good chunk of them too, or so Jacob said."

"It?" she asked again.

"Yeah. Some people called it The Apocalypse or The End of the World. A few said it was The Rapture. Basically, five years ago, half of the population of the world just vanished. Pop. Gone. Like that," Seth said and snapped his fingers in the air for emphasis. "One minute, life was normal, the next minute, people evaporated into ash in front of us and all hell broke loose. The official story on the news was that it was another alien attack, but some crazy, powerful alien attack which somehow randomly targeted half of all life in the universe."

Leah exhaled deeply and slumped against the couch, her head in her hands as she processed all he'd said.

"The animals disappeared," she said in a whisper. "We almost starved that year. We never knew why."

"Yeah. It was pure chaos. No one was unaffected. Then, a few months ago, the people who vanished all just showed up again, as if they'd never left. The official story was some super secret alliance of elite scientists and soldiers found out a way to bring them back…or at least most of them back. Yeah, there were quite a few people who were collateral damage-you know, who died when an unpiloted helicopter plowed into their office building or in a car crash when their driver vanished or died in surgery when their surgeon disappeared. Those ones never came back and it was still a lot, but then all the others came back," he said. He had long since abandoned his bowl of cereal and now he stirred the disintegrating o's into a grey mush in the milk and he grimaced.

"Yeah. They are back now," he said, "but it's not back to how it was before, you know? I mean, the rest of us had five years thinking they were dead. Not everyone can live with that kind of grief and loss. It can't just be undone. It changes you. So, one day, they all just reappear and it was a lot of chaos again cause they haven't changed, but we all have and they have to adjust to a totally new world than the one they were in before."

"Who vanished?" Leah asked, fearing the question, but knowing she needed to hear the answer.

He sighed and ran his fingers shakily through his short hair. "Jared…Quil…Paul…Brady…Rebecca Black, Billy, and Emily for starters," he said. "Then there were a bunch of the kids...," and he paused to wring his hands together. "And my fiancée and mom," he said. He shook as he spoke, unable to keep his tears at bay. They poured down his strong face in little rivers that mimicked the rain on the window pane.

"Oh, Seth," she said and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah. Charlie got the news that Bella, mom, and Renee were all gone on the same day. It was more than he could bear. He had a heart attack and he barely made it through. I spent months looking after him and trying to convince him to eat."

"It hit the leeches too?" she asked in surprise.

"Apparently the undead are still considered alive," Seth answered with a grimace. "It took out a good chunk of the Cullens too. Jacob said it took the combined babysitting efforts of all the remaining Cullens and Renesmee and himself to keep Edward from killing himself. He was more of a zombie than a vamp for a good chunk of time, though. Now that they are back, Jacob and Renesmee are finally talking about setting a new date for their wedding."

"It's really hard to believe."

"We've had years living it and none of us can still believe it. Yeah it was really eery. Cars were just abandoned heaps on the side of highways with no one to claim them. Memorials with names and stuff were everywhere. Towns were half-deserted, every few houses overgrown with weeds, broken down shutters, and darkness within. We had a bunch of Quileute move onto the Res from off of it since so many houses opened up. Then when everyone showed up, there's been awkward debates over who gets to stay in the houses and where their old stuff ended up.

"The saddest thing I've ever seen were all the birds looking for their mates and crying out for them after they vanished. Despite all the open land and decrease in pollution that the loss of so many people created, some of the animal populations still haven't recovered from their own losses and are on the verge of extinction.

"Even now that the people and animals are 'back,' there's a whole new set of problems as everyone readjusts again. The people who vanished have to now deal with grieving the people who died while they were gone and grapple with the new world they find themselves in."

"Is that…I mean, I noted Old Quil Ateara wasn't at the bonfire last night…did he…?"

"Yeah. You know how Papa Quil loved his grandson? He didn't last six months after Quil vanished. Poor Quil. He comes back and finds his grandpa gone and Claire married with a kid on the way. She thought he was dead so she did her best to move on. That's been awkward for everyone. He is staying with some relatives in Las Vegas for awhile to get some space and to figure out what to do next."

"And Jared?" Leah asked.

Seth's face fell and he hugged his knees a little tighter together. "Jared and Kim were driving down to Seattle that day. Jared was driving. He vanished and the car went into oncoming traffic. Kim didn't make it out. When he reappeared and found out what happened, it was too much for him to bear."

Leah choked on a gasp and covered her mouth with one hand.

"Seth, I am so sorry," she said as she finally let her tears fall down her cheeks. "I should have come home."

"I thought you were gone too," he said with a light shrug. "I thought that was why…yeah. With you, mom, and Lily all gone, what did I really have left to hang around here forever for? Phasing didn't save anyone or anything. Yeah. It would have been really nice to have you here. I mean, we were all pretty awful company, but it would have been easier if you were here."

She pulled him into a tight embrace which he failed to return. She released him and lost herself staring out the window, watching the drops of rain collect in little rivers along the glass.

"I was afraid to come back and behaved like a coward. Yes, I haven't had the greatest relationship with the pack here, but you all are my people, my family, and I shouldn't have turned my back on you all like that. I'm so sorry, Seth. I really screwed up. I should have been here."

"At least you are here now," he said. "Lily and I can finally have our wedding that was supposed to happen four years ago. That's something I couldn't have even dreamed of six months ago so it's pretty great. And hey-I'm even an uncle now! I kinda feel like I've won the lottery these past few months with all this greatness."

He lay his head on her shoulder and scooted closer to where she sat and they both fell silent, allowing the booms and crashes of the fighting Power Rangers to be the only sound in the room.

"So your mate's a wolf, too?" Seth asked.

"Yeah…well, more of a shape-shifter, I guess. When I met him, I thought he was only a wolf. He has more freaky talents than I've ever figure out. He's taught me how to phase into a falcon and a salmon and a deer, so that's pretty awesome."

"Wait…you are joking, right?" Seth asked. He lifted his head and the old, familiar warm grin greeted her.

"So not joking. I flew all over the Rockies. It was awesome!"

Seth laughed out loud. "That. Is. Awesome!" he shouted and he bumped her shoulder. "I always knew you were too special for any of the poor mortal men out there."

She laughed. "Yeah, I'm not even convinced he's entirely human," she said.

"Sam mentioned some, uh, misgivings he had about Fenris yesterday…what exactly happened there?"

At that Leah burst into giggles and fell against her brother's shoulder. "You should have been there for that one. Sam wanted to see if Fenris is, you know, like the Cold Ones."

"A danger to the tribe and people of Forks, I'm guessing?" Seth said.

"You got it. Except Sam didn't quite know how to ask him. So he goes, 'Do you eat or drink people?' and that's all he asks. Fenris got super confused for a minute before he gets this positively evil smile on his face. Then he says, 'Only on special occasions and when they beg me to. Or if I am particularly irritated with them. Or if one threatens the lives of my pups. Even then, I prefer only to break flesh and see the blood trickle down my incisors and listen to their groveling than their overall taste. And you Sam son of Uley-how many humans or former humans have you tasted?'

"Sam didn't know what to make of that and looked at me as if I could somehow 'fix it' and I bust up laughing."

They were interrupted by another smooth, lilting voice who emerged from the backyard, a muddy pup under each arm. He tilted his head to one side and gave Seth a polite nod. Then he placed the pups on the floor. They tumbled into a rolling, growling pile of fur and yips as they fought, even more so as their third sibling came running in from the backyard to join them. Leah raised an eyebrow as she took in the paw prints now painting the floor.

"They wish to greet their uncle," Loki responded.

Seth jumped to his feet and growled. The pups stopped their play and all turned curious glares on him. Seth tiptoed his way towards them, baring his human teeth, and then he ran to the backyard to play. Soon, five pups could be seen chasing their uncle through the trees in a cacophony of shouts, barks, and delighted howls. Leah smiled as she watched them from the window.

"World's best uncle," she said fondly. When she turned to the room next, not only were the muddy paw prints gone, but every stain in the carpet. She shook her head and smiled at the sight and added "magic stain removal" to the ever-growing list of useful talents her mate possessed.

"How was hunting?" she asked as she noted his concerned face. He wore his usual leather pants, boots, and long shirt again and he watched her carefully as he answered.

"All are satisfied."

He pursed his lips for a moment as if in consideration of his next words and then spoke again.

"You were unwell," he said slowly. "While we were away. Did some infortuitous circumstance befall you during our absence?"

She shook her head. "Just catching up with my brother. He explained what happened here while I was gone. You remember the year the animals disappeared?"

He nodded.

"It wasn't just Canada and it wasn't just animals. I don't know how our family escaped without missing anyone," she said and she proceeded to tell him what she had learned. Before she even finished explaining, Loki barreled out the back door as if about to seek vengeance upon an enemy. She followed after him and arrived just as he shouted Seth's name. His face was solemn and she could just make out a trace of panic in his emotions that she had only ever seen in his nightmares.

The wolf pups sat around their uncle in a half-circle as he patiently repeated the same tale Leah had just relayed.

"It's not possible," Loki murmured, half to himself. "The Tesseract was safely stored away on Asgard, the Mind Stone was left in the care of the Midgardian heroes. The Aether should have been destroyed with Malekith and the other three…It can't be possible."

"Excuse me?" Seth asked, bringing Loki to halt his pacing and turn to face him again.

"You mentioned half of the universe?" Loki asked. "No pattern underlying which portion vanished?"

"Not that I know of. It seemed to hit everyone pretty much the same. One of the news reports I saw interviewed someone who mentioned that this alien dude wanted to bring 'balance to the universe.'"

"Odin's beard," Loki hissed. "He did it."

"He?" Leah turned to face him. "You know who did it?"

Loki's eyes turned as fragile as sea glass and he turned away to avoid both her question and her observation. "The others-Earth's defenders, they called themselves the Avengers-who remains?" he asked with a voice too earnest.

"Oh yeah, ummm, I'm not sure. I know they recently held a funeral for Tony Stark, the billionaire guy with the suit. There were some stories about some others who died, but I don't remember the details. Here-you can look it up on my phone if you want," Seth said and he pulled out his phone. "What I can't tell you, the Almighty Google should know."

Loki took the phone, his hands noticeably shaking and his face pale, and he began to type.

ooooooo

Author's notes:

Well, there you have some answers...and more questions.

t'siqati: I am not really sure how to spell this appropriately in English. It's a fascinating concept I wish I could find more information on. Anyhow, Manuel J. Andrade's 1931 Quileute Texts gives more legends and information on the Quileute, including some written transcripts of their language with English translations above them. T'siqati appears in a Potlatch speech (which is already super interesting) and is then described in the notes as follows: "We have no word as comprehensive as t'siqati. It means natural and supernatural environment. It may be used to refer to the specific land occupied by a tribe, or to the whole world known to them; it may mean weather, or supernatural world. In some instances, we may render it by our word nature. Some of the Quileute at the present time are said to go to some high cliff on the sore, and facing the ocean, direct their prayers to t'siqati."

Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980.

Palimpsest - a manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible. (Free Dictionary)