|M - V| The Quiet Whispers of Shadows

A wolf is a wolf.
Even in a cage,
Even dressed in silk.

Elowen, despite her best efforts, has become lost in the never-ending chaos of a broken world. She trips and stumbles upon one ruin and then another. It is a constant breath of stifled air. A reminder that everything, one day, will turn to dust. How this world has crumbled. It is a forgotten tapestry of what had once been. Elowen knew not what world she had been spat into but she knew that it was not one filled with life.

The forests back home were teaming with life. If you were quiet enough beneath the bow of ladened limbs, you could hear the soft call of doves, the rustling of rabbits running through thickets, and the babbling of a brook. It was a cacophony of gentle sounds that told you the world was alive. This place has no such noises. There were no hymns of existence sang upon the wind. The breeze was devoid of whispers as it ran against the shell of her ear. It is silence that sends a shiver down the girl's spine. For she knew that quiet was dangerous. In the woods, quiet meant that a predator was stalking just at the edge of your sight.

Elowen had only known such silence once before. That night, the moon shone silver light, which bled through sparse fall leaves. She had been out to collect the glowing mushrooms that could only be found sprouting from moss when the moon was at its fullest. That night, she had been wrapped in the serene knowledge that her home was safe. Their little cottage in the woods had always been a sanctuary. Nothing bad ever got through.

Yet, on this night, as Elowen moved silently along a well-trodden path, the world around her went silent. The air stood still, and the night birds refused to sing. All there that could be heard was the sound of her hooves digging into the slightly damp earth beneath her. She had been foolish then, lured into the sense of security that home afforded, and had not heeded the silence's warning.

Darkness had swallowed her, then. A snarling maw wrapped tight around her neck and shook. She could feel crimson mingle with silver saliva and knew she was dead. The shadows clung to her, then, like the hands of forsaken lovers. Ready to take her, to feed her to the fungi and moss of the ground so that she may live again through them. But the beast had not devoured her whole. No, it had simply dug its teeth into her - taken just a bite - and then raced back into the shadows. It left her there dazed and bleeding until Aspen found her. Her sister, the sun, did all she could to stitch her back together. But a physician's hand can only do so much to stave off a curse dug into flesh by enamel. That night, Elowen had become something other.

Even now, she can feel the beast clawing away at the cage within her chest. At home, they had calmed the beast. Had trapped it within her with no escape. It snarled against its entrapment - a ravenous and rabid thing. It was an ache she did not wish to claim, that loss of a piece of herself that she did not want. It gnawed and gnawed at her until her thoughts were jumbled, and she was no longer paying attention to where she was going. Mindlessly moving forward, not thinking of the silence and the danger offered.

There came no shortage of hushed whispers over the malformed figures prowling along the outskirts of the city. Hunters ready to sink their fangs within those foolish enough to wander into the encroaching darkness. Rabid. Feral. Creatures who had long lost themselves to the hunger once locked within. Beings that could no longer be considered man for they had succumb to embedded instincts, become nothing more than the wild beasts they donned the skin of.

At sounds such stories sounded as if they were meant as nothing more than fairy tales. Fabrications to frighten children from traipsing into the woods without care but instead keep them safe, protected within the stony walls surrounding the city. But in truth it was no safer here for it only brought confinement. Close quarters with the very monsters so many prayed for protection from, those they sought to escape. At least the multitude within the capitol held on to their very beings. Their minds still intact until the moons forsaken call stripped them of all resolve before she cast them from her embrace.

Returned what had been stolen away as if to fuel her light. Minds returned in full as if they had never been lost and until they were robbed, gave in entirely to her song - they did not risk loosing their dwellings. Banishment the only outcome for those who strayed too heavily toward indulgence. Left to wander as nothing more than the very beast they had become, wallowing in their never ending hunger lest they were finally slaughtered.

Such a fate August never wished to succumb to himself. A monster undeniably lost to madness not one he wished to encounter even as paces spurred him toward the encroaching wilds. Chasing after talk of a hunt, of a beast who stalked too closely to other’s presumed safeties. If nothing more it would offer distraction from all which plagued his own thoughts, haunting notions which fought to intertwine and threatened to pull him deeper into the temptation of a swirling abyss. Notions forcefully shaken back as eyes squeezed shut in hopes it would silence the whispers echoing within.

It never worked though. Why would now be any different?
Each swirling phrase a reminder of short comings, of all that was wrong. Of how easily such things could be righted.

All of it ever winding like the shadows twisting beneath stretching canopies. An unspoken offerance of shelter from the glowering moon and her poison, allowing nothing more than faint tendrils to break through the foliage. Painting the woods in calming streams of dancing moonlight. If it weren’t for the truths harbored in coming out here - the unnerving silence which seemed to envelop the land - it may have been peaceful. Relaxing even and yet it could bring nothing but dread.

Unnatural it was when the night birds and insects failed to sing, when the chuffed tones of a disapproving wild cat did not attempt to chase him off nor alert to the skittering hooves of a retreating fawn. Instead it was quiet. Still. It spoke only of a higher predator stalking the tree lines but wherever - and whatever - it was lay shrouded in mystery. Senses unable to pick up on any drastic shift upon these lands foretelling of a natural hunter that the forest welcomed into its fold without qualm… only those who dwelt alongside it offered protest in their absence.

Well, all but one it seemed as scent unknown tangled upon the breeze and coaxed a path to shift. Pause found only when eyes fell upon a stranger wandering her own path just as he did. No snarling maw etched upon her features, no slickened gleam reflecting from ivory fangs nor the fresh spilling of blood to plague her. One still wore a fairly human skin. The untamed furs of the very wolf scented upon her flesh did not cover her with its veil. Surely this could not be the proclaimed target. So despite his hesitance Augustus is careful to make himself known.

Alerting this stranger to his presence with the crackle of branches and a beckons of honeyed phrase, seeking answers perhaps neither of them truly held. “Hey! Haven’t seen anything strange tonight have you? Out of the ordinary?” Or was she the very poacher another hoped to damn? She didn’t look it and yet elongate ears still turned back as rose-tinted stare fixed upon her in hints of suspicion and distrust before another askance laced the air, “Or heard anything for that matter? Talk of monsters has worked a fair number of city folk into a tizzy and they are hoping for a bit of… reassurance, I suppose.” For extermination. A rather common occurrence, so the goat saw no harm in divulging such information even if she did turn out to be the given mark.