Paws fly across snowy crust, denting each step with the faintest of sound of flakes crushing together. Thorns curled around the worlf, sharp bulwarks against an unruly path. Corners upon dead ends, thorny walls flying past, catching tufts of fur as the wolf poured its all into the fury of its pace. Pursuer approaches, no outlet reveals itself. The wolf considers the thorns, gathers its quarters, bunches, in readiness to leap.

Brightness floods the vision, washed away by sun streaming from the window. "Begging your pardon, mum, but it's time to get up." The maid smiles. "It's a beautiful day for a wedding."

Okay, I'm in. What topics would you like to see me write about with my characters?

Your choices
Alita Durant, Daeva Invictus: prettyfangygirl
Anastasia of Salonika, Gangrel Carthian elder: aoidoi
Isabel Michaels, Mastigos Arrow: isabelmichaels
Nujalik, Summer Court Hunterheart: nujalik

(Nujalik has been retired via Arcadian capture, but I still have fun with her psyche and occasionally write bits and bobs for her that are non-canon. I just didn't have time to play her.)

Dear Diary,

My aunts have instructed me to begin a diary, a record of my days as they undertake my education and introduction to what they name as proper society. I cannot conceive that this little book would be of vital interest to anyone - indeed, the thought of chronicling my lessons causes me to pace the room in frustration. This of course is deemed most unseemly, my steps too large, my habit of pausing by the window in thought. Young ladies of breeding ought not to be given to such maudlin turns, but I confess I am enthralled by the parkland outside, and the woods in the distance, no matter that it it wholly impermissible to leave the house without a proper escort.

It is time for my dancing lesson. Perhaps I will be tired afterwards, and sleep without the dreams that cause me to have such wicked and rebellious thoughts and desires. My aunts say that it is high time I be married, but that I am as yet, far too rag-mannered to have a hope of catching a husband. I hope it will always be so. As much as I long to be away, it is not to another house.

Sincerely,
Rachel

They wanted information from the hobgoblin. They were too nice. Her gaze drifted around the freehold's common room, settling on a black marker.

Walking into the kitchen, she remembered how Gustav had taught her craftsmanship. Precision was important when the material tended to squirm and scream. She marked her lines, following the smell of bone and tendon. The ogre's voice was calm and reasonable, smooth where the hobgoblin's spiked in acrid terror, wavering as she drew each dotted line.

Finally the ogre sighed, looking at the wolf. "It would be a shame if you didn't finish your artwork."

Hide and muscle parted as silken mist under her single claw, and the hobgoblin screamed its life away under her unmoving gaze.

They watched through the gate, the anirniit from the Hedge. Drank in the whimsies of the Fairest, paying no heed to the Blackthorne Beast until she had carved sigils of warding facing the gate, wolves, pale shredded curves through the dark bark of her canvas. She was no beauty, and glad for such mercies - fairest were not for the fights given to her. No way of telling whether the icy voices were anirniit or tuurngait. They needed an angakkuq, and the nearest was the Priestess, to divine the path to be taken, divide tuurngait from anirniit. Nujalik carved her protection, growling low warnings to the wisps from beyond. Anirniit were not kind or cruel to be kind or cruel. They simply were what they were, and no two legger would ever entirely understand them.

Emma spoke of freedom, espousing that every being ought to be free. The anirniit said they had no such dreams.

Adding eagles above the wolves, she hoped they might dream of freedom, the freedom the wind grants. Every curl of pine from beneath her fingers added to the prayer, and when she was done, the shavings were added to the fire, telling their dreams to the wind in twists and puffs of smoke.

Every day of freedom is an act of faith.

The priestess was meant for circles, dancing, chanting, invoking the seasons or swaying to a dance. Circles led by concordance, by pack agreement and shared purpose, ritual roles and sacred intent. The soldiers stood in ranks, even when they ate at round tables, rows and orders and precedence that left no room for circles that spun with the wind of the seasons.

Round pegs could fit in square holes if you banged on them enough, but it didn't keep the piteraq wind out and it gave the priestess a headache and sad eyes. Best that she did not forget circles.

It is cold and wet. The pack is alone in the park, full on the spoils of several grocery dumpsters. The stores are not open to sell them hot food, and she does not know why, cannot read the signs of holiday wishes. It is very cold, but there is a tree that helps. The police come through, but they do not see her to make her leave. She knows it is warm in the moving tunnels, but the pack cannot come. It is warm on the buses, but the pack cannot come. They are large and she is small and cannot hide them all.

The pack sits in the cold and the wet, and she thinks that the sky should not be dusky orange in winter. It should be pink, green, blue, starry black. Not a dull orange.

The forests call to her spirit, as he calls to her body.

Kindness compelled the man to hold the drum out, offering from the circle seated in the park. A blank face looked back at him, another strange homeless girl in tattered denim with eyes that spoke of the fractured mind so many had on the street.

Fingers rolled along the skin, turned and flicked the drum experimentally, taking care to not pierce the skin with nails far sharper than any ought to be. Half remembered rhythms floated to her thoughts, made her feet itch. The circle opened, closed, one more in number. Hair slithered over her shoulders in thick tied locks, shaking with each slap of her palm on stretched hide. Either she found the beat or it found her, and swept up in the force of twelve other drums, she didn't much care.

It was strange to sit in warm grass on a sunny day and hear drums, but better sitting outside than inside the fluorescent-lit school gymnasiums of memory. She never thought much of Rachel, for all that she was supposed to be Rachel, but the feel of the drumskin itched at her thoughts, casting up a faint patchwork of feathers in her hair and anklets a size too big for a young girl. Slap and slide, feet itching to trace patterns of creation she never quite remembered, the impulse to share this force with someone almost overwhelming, nearly cracking her lips and forcing hated words out. Rachel dancing with Bear. Rachel dancing with Wolf. Rachel dancing with the Dragoon. Rachel dying.

Casting over the possibilities, there was one who would understand, who needed this escape and solace perhaps as badly as Nujalik-who-was-Rachel did. The Priestess.

The question came. "Will we see you next week?" Only a nod in response, but it was enough.

The one behind the bar smiled. "Yes, Sir! Anything else I can do for you while I am up?"
His smile fluttered against his lips, trying to escape from its prison of a plain and neutral expression. "Hmm.. how about a lapdance?"
The newcomer laughs, walking over to him and kissing his cheek. "The lap taken yet?"
"Hey baby. Not yet, hop on board."
She grinned. "Oh, yummy." One leg went over his lap and she slid down, angling her pelvis so as to maximize contact.

I understand lap dances. That they are something men will pay for. The basics of how to wiggle, to play at the motions of mating. It is not so different from when I exchange false-mating for money. I do not understand that she does this without compensation. One more example of my ignorance. Or perhaps it is of my intelligence?

This is a quick email to let you know that the following changes havejust been made on your application for Summer Mantle x5 for Nujalik: Status set to Approved

He liked to show her off. To have her kneel at his feet in the halls of the Gentry, leashed tightly. An obedient hunter, ostensibly faithful hound. She watched the fine hems of skirts and pants stride past, and dreaded the trips to and from the diversions of the Fae. Always to kneel, often to be forced into the shape of a woman, oddly curved and off balance. She hated the few times he made the trip in company, dictating she curl into a corner of the carriage rather than lope alongside his mount.

He was kind, at times, seemingly approving of her love for her new fur, smiling as she gamboled about as a pup. He was cruel in others, midnight visits that left her crawling inside her own mind, wrapped into a tight little ball in the kennels, bleeding and sore.

"Show me your spirit, little one."

Some came and went as she clawed her way through the pack, each submitting opponent earning her a kind caress. The first one who wouldn't submit, she killed, waking to her wounds being healed and the master beaming.

"That's the spirit, little one."

When she was harsh, he praised her. When she was merciful, he spun her soul from her breath, winding it up and tucking it away, the stinging cold of a thousand Arctic nights settling in her chest.

When she rebelled, took her pack and ran to the woods, slaying all that would follow her, she never knew if he was proud or angry. The question plagued her quieter moments. She tried not to have too many of those.

Blood dotted her jacket, spattered over the dark fabric still wet from the icy lake. Warm drops of water collected on her scalp, running down her neck to be chilled by the icy Scottish air.

The privateer's blood had tasted sweet, but she had acted as a hunter and not taken it with tooth, only by claw. Considering the sky, the faint recollection of being screamed at by a lesser hunter faded away.

Her cousins lived on the coast, hunted seal and whale as Sedna did. They taught her to wait and listen, the splish-whuff-whuff of a seal surfacing in their holes to breathe signalling prey. Quiet was the hunter's friend. Quiet was in short supply, though abundant here on the lake. She thought of the quiet, the impatience that stems from unnecessary noise on the hunt, and Nâlaussartoq, his hunt disrupted by children in a nearby ravine.

Each time Nâlaussartoq was near to spearing a seal, the children would cause a noise, and frighten off the seal, the quick flip of the seal's tail signalling the departure of much-needed food. In frustration he cried out for the ravine to close up over those who deprived the hunt of food, and the ice closed over their head. The hill was ice, and could not be dug through, and in the end, the children starved to death, licking at the food poured down the small fissure crack in the ice.

In anger, the neighbors fell upon the man, setting him into a swift flight from his hunters. After many days, he poured all his speed into his feet and rose into the sky, alighting in the heavens as a great star. That star lies in the west, when the lights begin to return after the great darkness. But it is low down, and never climbs high in the sky. It was called Nâlaussartoq: he who stands and listens.

"Nâlaussartoq." She stood and listened to the lake.

They never said anything about votes. Apples handed out, shiny and red, smelling of the blossoms in spring and the sun's kiss in summer, felled by autumn's cool wind for winter's food. Apples. Nobody said that they were votes. Two-leggers, getting confused about their food again. Apples were food and votes were paper, food kept you alive through winter and paper made a nice fire.

Emma looked at her cheerfully, expectantly. "Can I have your apple?"

There wasn't much else to be done. You can't eat a vote. Even when it looks like a particularly fine apple...and tastes like one too. A few muscle contractions, a little determination, and some hacking later, she deposited her vote on the ground, seeds, stem, peel and flesh commingled and half-digested. Vague, unnamed horror transfixed the small Manikin and it seemed like something had to be said, something to break the two-legger's frozen stare.

"Thought it was food."

Poison. Always poison. Floating and falling, the ground didn't want to stay put and neither did her dinner. Food, that would be wasted upon the ground, tried to rise, and only the memories of hungry winters tamped it back down once more. A sickening pressure lurked at the backs of her eyes, trying to pop them from the sockets to blow around the ground like puffballs in a field. Spreading weight at the back of her head, a lassitude so unpleasant that instinctive rebellion immediately led to submission from overpowering nausea.

A quiet whimper slipped from her lips, a half-whispered groan to the spirits for mercy. Taboos she had broken, unforgivable even in their mystery, there was no other explanation. Contrition was required, penitence and sacrifice. As soon as her teeth would hush enough to let her move.

Ox looked down at her, and just watching him move was more than her head could bear. She screwed her eyes shut as he rumbled, "Why the fuck didn't you say you'd never drank booze before?"

Why, oh why did her hair hurt?

She wasn't allowed to speak. Even when she had been forced onto two legs, taught to fight with hand and knife instead of fang and claw, speech was forbidden. Leashed and collared as was only done when she walked as a woman, no words were permitted to pass her lips, none were allowed to hounds or hunters, only the sounds of wolves.

In time, she forgot the speech of man. Easier were the howls and yips of the pack, the snap of a bow as she dropped an arrow where the wished, the shush of a javelin through the air. Unable to describe them in words, she thinks of them as sounds, smells.

Even bursting through the Hedge, the chatter of man assaulted her senses in the rudest fashion. She has learned some, through the kindness of others, remembered more, but it still feels awkward on her tongue, syntax and cadence unwieldy and belabored. She does not care for it.

I saw him today. Christian. He was clean, sharp and cold. Held his arm out to me and offered me a drink.

I liked him better before. When he was Fleetfoot, and knew his pack. When he was warm in the pile of pack and full from helping the hunt.

I know what he will do. What he does every autumn. He will come to me and cast off his shiny shirts, offer his throat to me and run with us for half a moon.

But he will still be Christian.

It had been a year since the snowy night in the woods, that first mating. She'd stayed for six days afterwards, six days of smoldering glances and steps that paused mid-thought, close, hot fucks against a wall and long explorations in front of the fires they both preferred to electricity. The seventh morning, he woke up and she was gone, only a wrinkled blanket to prove she'd even existed. Such was the way of a wolf who happens to be a woman, and well he knew it.

A year of life, in all its magnificence and drudgery passed, and while sometimes she was missed, it bore no sense to dwell upon the fact, and no sensible wolf would. Four seasons, and again it was in the dead of winter, snow piled high in New Hampshire. The freehold gathered, and he attended, as was his habit when he wasn't traveling, hunting. The room was crowded, the acrid, too-warm tang of bodies deep in his nose, the hunting instinct digging through the perfumes and deodorants from sheer reflex to count the people, when he found her. Warm fur, leather, sun-warmed wood, and woman.

Eyes met across the crowded room, two on ten. They looked healthy and fat, the results of a good year in the sizable dogs. Her fingertips rested on the scruff of the largest as they navigated the room, and smooth steps quickly brought the wolves face to face as man and woman. Eyes met, questions warring with the acceptance of the beast, the arguments of alpha to alpha, and the welcoming of a parting run over long. The sheer complexity of the silent exchange attracted attention, others nearby watching carefully to see if there would be a fight.

The tension was broken when his hand came up to cup her cheek, and she leaned into his palm, smiling. Three breaths later, she stepped into his embrace, arm curling around his waist, thumb playing over the edge of his belt. Thus, they remained a moment, motionless in contrast to the swirl of dogs at their ankles. Some looked away, embarrassed to see something so private, some could not tear their eyes from the pair embracing, surprised at the level of quiet pleasure and relief on each face.

They left shortly thereafter, amidst a small stream of dogs, walking closely enough that their fingers brushed with each step, though not intertwined. It occurred to those prone to thinking of such things, that neither had spoken a word.

His voice hisses, caresses the syllables of her name, letters she only barely remembers.

Her claws part his flesh, kissing skin and muscle with exquisite meaning.

His knives trace her curves, parting skin to show her how she's made.

Her eyes watch him slither, glide from shadows to dance with her in a pas de deux of bone and steel.

Laceration, contusions and scars, writing love poems on tender flesh, and sonnets on bone.

( Lyrics - Poe - Trigger Happy Jack )

She wished she could leave two legs behind, bound out of this human skin and into the forests with her pack. Wolf forever, no complicated exchanges and references she didn't understand. Scent and howl, prey and pack.

Survival was easy, next to conversation.