JOY
She hears the clack of leaves and branches far above her in the canopy. The way the light shifts and undulates with the moving leaves, the gloom appears alive with rivulets of golden light mingling with the green overcast in her blurred vision. She cannot see with her physical eyes the way the canopy ebbs and crests like green waves on a sea of foliage, but The Wolf knows what it is.
Autumn is changing. Winter is coming. The Solstice festivals will begin soon in many hamlets, and Central will hold the biggest one of Midwinter. Perhaps the Merchant's Guild will travel there this year. It is always impressive to see their small village spread across tamed Patrol Trees that actually do what they're told. A semblance of faerie tale-esque normalcy in a place where normality has ceased.
The air is getting cooler now, the smell of frozen snow and the cold river water beginning to permeate more frequently. The Fog Tides will roll down the mountains, as they do between autumn and winter, and spring and summer. A perfect tell for the change of seasons.
The perfect reason to get up and get going. She doesn't want to freeze in her Beech, not when she has returned so soon.
Fingers run along the edge of her Beech's wooden cradle, her vision starting to sharpen and her senses returning to her with the warm brush of moss against her face. She can recognize the uncanny curves of the wood above her, familiar in a way a child knows its mother's face.
The last few moments are lost in her memory, but she knows there is a new scar somewhere on her body she might find later. As she rises to sit up and brush the leaves fallen against her away, she is keenly aware of the way her heart stutters a little in her chest, the smells that permeate her nostrils and the crisp air that fills her lungs. Of the way her muscles have begun to warm against the disuse for the past day or so.
As she digs through her coat to find the case that holds her pipe, she stands and moves stiffly, feeding fresh energy into her crackling joints. The silver wolf's head pipe is smoking when she finds it and pulls it out to settle behind her left fang. A long inhale still gives her a taste of the sweet clove oil on the earthy undertone of tobacco, despite there being none in the cup.
Change is coming...
The hulking caskets of Beeches to either side of the Grove simply serve to remind her not only of her sacrifice, but the simple humble joy of knowing that she is alive again. She looks down the avenue between the old trees to where the golden gloom darkens and turns more green, inviting her back into Schwarzwald's embrace. It is a call she will heed again and again, without hesitation.
PRAISE
"You are a good dog, aren't you."
Of course it is, she muses, seeing the Shepherd's ears perk and its head lift as she addresses it. Fringeanimals usually are good, they are intelligent enough to process alignments like humans do, and it's more than obvious this is a fringehound. Born of the energy and fabric of the Forest itself, but outside the cosmic rays that change animals and people and reality itself further in more dramatically.
She doesn't mean for her voice to sound coarse and rough, but it crackles with lack of sleep and the expected rounds of worried crying that come from witnessing a beloved parent violently missing three of four limbs. Papa Bear is currently being worked on. The usual doctor she would see doesn't have the facilities to handle rough-edge amputations like this, so they've sent him to a clinic under claims of a 'construction accident'. The staff here are all known friendlies to stalkers, they'll keep it under wraps what really happened, but for purposes of paperwork and funding, they'll tell authorities it was a road grater.
"He must have gotten caught." they'll say, give the name of a company in cahoots with them, and that will be that. No one will be the wiser, and with the roads in and around Stuttgart constantly under construction, no one will question its possibility.
But it's not the authorities Wulf is afraid of, really. She's dealt with them before, has been in and out of prisons in local towns for snooping around the security walls of the Zone. She worries more for the man she calls 'Father', waiting to hear some news, whether it's good or bad. A conclusion is all she wants, she tells herself. Even though she won't have the constitution right now to take his conclusion.
Her head is buried in her arms, her knees to her chest. It's a tactic to try to help her sleep, but all it seems to do is bring back the memories of Papa lying at the end of a bloody trail, clutching the gory skull of some horrible monster in his remaining hand, the German Shepherd with the collar of his jacket in its mouth still trying to pull him along although it's tiring fast…
There is a nose poking into the shadowy pocket under her arms. It wheedles and wiggles its way in and makes a weird little noise at her, not quite a whine, but a collection of strange vocalizations only a Shepherd can make. It's still here, bending and shifting to try to get a good lick in at her tear-stained face, and she can see the shadows moving where its tail has started wagging furiously.
It makes no move to get away when she grasps at it, hugging the fringehound around the neck and nose, save its continued effort to lick what it can reach. She has to thank it somehow, but for now, the stable fuzz of the animal calms her enough to give her tired mind some rest, gives her some therapeutic monotony in petting its head and rubbing its ears.
A good dog, indeed.
RAIN
She breathes…
It's like a sigh of relief, really, felt more than heard in the ground and in the trees. A heave of the shoulders, the relax of tension after.
It takes The Wolf a moment to hear it, the canopy above is so tightly knit that barely any light can penetrate. The clack of leaves in the wind is faint, and just under that, a whisper. She thinks at first it is the Voice of the Forest itself and barely stirs from her resting place, nestled in the roots of one of the few old beech trees that never came alive. Few places in the Forest are so consistent and therefore safe.
The leaves begin to drip, layers saturated from the headrains pouring persistently above. A few drops patter against the roots around her head, small rivulets begin seeping down the branches and the trunk of the beech. She smells it now, fresh water mingling with clattering leaves soaked by it. She stirs more. Headrains are the calm before the storm, and the rapidly-dropping temperature finally snaps her to wakefulness.
Her head pops up from between the massive roots, a hand resting gently on one while she assesses her surroundings. There is a hamlet a short ways from here, but it will still take some time to get there. Straight lines are generally forbidden in the Zones, meandering paths through traps and tests preferred. She has little time, unwinding herself from her hovel to snatch up gear and armament and situate it properly across her frame as she moves.
It won't be long before the swirling wind brings captive water in the tight-knit leaves above down on her, and even less after that that the hail will begin. The ground hums and sings as soon as she touches it, the air vibrating the paths to take in her ears.
The creak and groan of trees signifies the wind is coming, not loud and enveloping enough to be the Voice. A wide toothy yawn is given before she sets off proper, knowing she will be in warm walls and with friendly faces soon enough.
SMOKE
It's routine. A ritual.
The Wolf never did like the taste or smell of conventional cigarettes. Sure, they'll do in a pinch when the stores run dry until she can restock, but they don't have the same feel or taste as raw tobacco does.
She remembers when the old silver pipe came floating into her life, something a Zoner or another probably dug up in much the same way a stalker does artifacts. It's an odd thing, she realizes in affection, staring at it as she pulls it out.
The wood is hardly worn, a marbled dark red wood with the patina'd silver cap and mouthpiece. Not even real tarnish, just age, mar the intricately molded wolf's head at the front, with its toothy jaws open to belch the fiery embers lit within. It suits her a little too well. Perhaps it was just waiting for her that day on the merchant's table with its banged silver case, some inexplicable pull of the cosmos bringing her to it, and in turn pulling it to her.
Yes. It was meant to be hers, she thinks bemusedly as she packs it with the darkened dry tobacco leaves soaked in clove oil.
A ritual, a routine.
The mouthpiece fits almost perfectly between her top canine and incisors, held in place with the slightest pressure of her jaws. The old banged-up lighter she's had since she was twelve sets the leaves ablaze for a brief second, she stokes the fires with a few good puffs until it smoulders as it should.
A blaze of embers in those quicksilver eyes that continue to scan the markets of Central, and she sits up on the boulder that marks the middle of the bustling market town. It's a moment before she exhales a ring around her head of the sweet-smelling smoke, and her shoulders sag a little to relieve the tension of the journey prior, a shrug of arsenal and equipment off to the side of her.
Inhale, exhale. A ring of smoke reflexively released.
A routine, a ritual.
DARKNESS
The cordon is a lost cause here.
Wulf knew that almost as soon as she joined the ragtag force of Zoners and stalkers, and she's sure there are a few of the bandits from the Fringes in here too. Greedy little opportunists, but they will still pull together to protect what gives them their livelihood. The canisters have already flown, the first ones hitting the ground between them and the military platoon trying to push further into Schwarzwald on this side and releasing their thick gas.
It is indeed humbling, the speed at which smoke can spread. Wreathing the world in billowing veils, obscuring a crowd from itself, an individual from a mass. She can hear others trapped in the shifting plumes around her. It burns at her lungs, forcing her to charge the filter unit at her right hip, the cup having already been settled over her nose and lower face to protect her identity. As the filter starts to kick into gear, she hears a rifle fire.
It's just one round, a piercing shot tearing across the cacophony of voices and shadowy bodies moving for cover. She can't tell what side it came from, only that the world erupts at it. There's angry questions, there's a dissonant shouting back and forth and surrounding her on all sides as she turns to run back toward the sheltering Barrier.
Someone grabs her wrist and squeezes, unintentionally making her grit her teeth at the vice-like grip. She grabs them back and pulls as she runs, and the terrified young Zoner who had been standing next to her pulls through the smoke like a ship through a belligerent wave. The vapors still cling to his shoulders and his hair, tendrils trying to drag him back into obscurity.
He is still scared, the way his eyes dart wildly around him, the way his shaking hand grips the old hunting rifle he brought, she can feel him tremble where he holds her tightly. He doesn't fully realize that he has grabbed someone, he likely flailed when the gas began pouring and tensions began rising and simply latched onto the first thing he touched.
Another gunshot, equally as piercing as the one before. The world feels like it's being drowned in wet wool, heavy and oppressive. Something, somewhere, has to break.
Two more shots from small caliber arms, tiny pops next to the roaring of bigger armament before. The soldiers on the other side of the smokescreen are taking aim, she can hear the commands being issued over the confusion still reigning over those trapped and lost.
She can hear her pulse in her ears now, feels the hackles begin to rise as a precursor to the event she instinctively knows is coming.
It's reflex to plant herself firmly against the crumbling asphalt below and whip the young Zoner around her. He's still in a frantic shock, flinging forward with little effort and letting go of her with the momentum of his body. He trips over a combination of himself and the edge of a chunk of road and topples, losing his grip on the rifle. Through the ringing in her ears, she hears the old weapon clack against the crumbled road, loud against the first of the hail as bullets shred through the thick smokescreen with the deafening rhythmic roar of at least thirty military-issued rifles.
The boy is still writhing, disoriented, but seems otherwise unharmed. It makes her glad to see he might survive this. He is still so young, still has his life ahead of him.
In so narrow a space in the dark of the smokescreen still billowing like an angry volcanic vent, he is all she can focus on when the first bullet pierces her back and cracks her left shoulderblade.
A/N: A general collection of shorts based on one-word prompts. Do you have a prompt for the list? Send it to me!
