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Title: soft snow falling
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Hernén, Belladonna
Prompt: 067 "Snow"
Word Count: 510
Rating: all ages
Notes: follows this. Hernén's first winter in what will become the Trickwood, years later.
The snow, and the singing, began just after the darkness grew deep enough that the sun had to be down, not just hiding behind the huge trees, and he stirred a stick into the edges of the fire he sat next to, listening.
The wolves, in their entirety, were gone from the fires and the light of torches. Not abandoned, though--the singing saw to that.
No bard-made song, this, no human words at all, unless it was a language a very far way away from home, one he couldn't even recognize as kin to his own tongue. No celebration, for that matter, crowing over a kill or a victory, no lament for the lost, no directionless call that made the short hair on the back of one's neck stand up straight and a hand fall on instinct to gunstock. He had no context, for this, and that irritated him more than he'd ever publically admit.
The near-silent sounds of the snow falling echoed within the tones of the wolf-howling, intensifying the near-oppressive feel of listening the entire clearing and the woods beyond it seemed to have fallen into. He watched, without turning his head, humans build their fires higher and cluster closer to them, not really to escape the snow, though all would have answered so if asked.
"Some hold," said Belladonna's raspy voice from the darkness past his own fire, and he jerked, dropping his stick into the embers, lost her next words and had to hope she'd repeat them.
"Some hold," she said again, and he could hear her laughter now, and bared his teeth at the fire, "that a world's ending begins when a wolf eats the sun."
"You don't, I take it," he replied, shoving over a bit to the side on the fallen log he sat on to face where her voice was coming from more squarely.
"We're not so stupid, no," she agreed, and moved forward just enough that her eyes and the shadow of her muzzle flickered in and out of view with the flames. "Why destroy that which gives us light to hunt by, that casts shadows for us to hide within, that blinds our enemies and warms our children?"
He bit his tongue on his first reply, nodded instead to the omnipresent darkness, the snow, and the howling. "Why aren't you out there?"
She laughed. "You'd have me sing the sun home, on the longest night? Might as well ask for a year of darkness direct."
" . . . That's what they're doing?" he asked, half-disbelieving. "The sun doesn't listen--"
"It may not. But we've been singing since before the world ended. And we've no wish to test it, and find out we were right, and you were wrong. We sing our sweetest, tonight, to remind the sun to come home, o only as crazy as your blood makes you." A flash of white teeth, made orange and yellow by the quality of light, "Your blood gives you things ours doesn't. And it fails you in things ours gives us."
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Hernén, Belladonna
Prompt: 067 "Snow"
Word Count: 510
Rating: all ages
Notes: follows this. Hernén's first winter in what will become the Trickwood, years later.
The snow, and the singing, began just after the darkness grew deep enough that the sun had to be down, not just hiding behind the huge trees, and he stirred a stick into the edges of the fire he sat next to, listening.
The wolves, in their entirety, were gone from the fires and the light of torches. Not abandoned, though--the singing saw to that.
No bard-made song, this, no human words at all, unless it was a language a very far way away from home, one he couldn't even recognize as kin to his own tongue. No celebration, for that matter, crowing over a kill or a victory, no lament for the lost, no directionless call that made the short hair on the back of one's neck stand up straight and a hand fall on instinct to gunstock. He had no context, for this, and that irritated him more than he'd ever publically admit.
The near-silent sounds of the snow falling echoed within the tones of the wolf-howling, intensifying the near-oppressive feel of listening the entire clearing and the woods beyond it seemed to have fallen into. He watched, without turning his head, humans build their fires higher and cluster closer to them, not really to escape the snow, though all would have answered so if asked.
"Some hold," said Belladonna's raspy voice from the darkness past his own fire, and he jerked, dropping his stick into the embers, lost her next words and had to hope she'd repeat them.
"Some hold," she said again, and he could hear her laughter now, and bared his teeth at the fire, "that a world's ending begins when a wolf eats the sun."
"You don't, I take it," he replied, shoving over a bit to the side on the fallen log he sat on to face where her voice was coming from more squarely.
"We're not so stupid, no," she agreed, and moved forward just enough that her eyes and the shadow of her muzzle flickered in and out of view with the flames. "Why destroy that which gives us light to hunt by, that casts shadows for us to hide within, that blinds our enemies and warms our children?"
He bit his tongue on his first reply, nodded instead to the omnipresent darkness, the snow, and the howling. "Why aren't you out there?"
She laughed. "You'd have me sing the sun home, on the longest night? Might as well ask for a year of darkness direct."
" . . . That's what they're doing?" he asked, half-disbelieving. "The sun doesn't listen--"
"It may not. But we've been singing since before the world ended. And we've no wish to test it, and find out we were right, and you were wrong. We sing our sweetest, tonight, to remind the sun to come home, o only as crazy as your blood makes you." A flash of white teeth, made orange and yellow by the quality of light, "Your blood gives you things ours doesn't. And it fails you in things ours gives us."
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 12:16 am (UTC)From:Says a lot about a man in one line, tha'.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 04:58 pm (UTC)From:it's like...almost a summation of him and the belladonna all in one shot, and to an extent, the places they come from.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-23 01:48 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 08:07 pm (UTC)From:there's an interesting implication of deeper ritual/belief/thingie, in the hints that some people are not involved in the sunsinging. That might be an interesting thread to pursue.
(also, in fairness to that wolf, there WAS an awful lot of provocation. Anyone might eat the sun after that.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 08:40 pm (UTC)From:The wolves of the 'Wood are a really interesting cultural element: they have belief systems, that can but are by no means required to dovetail with the local humans'. They have different social behavioural cues, ways of allocating duties, etc, that are recognisably human-complex but at the same time aren't actually human.
. . By which I mean, yes, I quite agree on the interesting thread to pursue idea. :)