Tale of Storms and Shadows
Taranis had wandered for three days since his exile. Taranis wore no furs now., just the old stag-hide wrap and the necklace his mother had pressed into his palm with shaking fingers.
He ate roots and river water,. Asheand slept like a fox with one ear open and his back to a tree.
That night, a full moon watched the world from behind broken cloud. The forest lit with silver veins. Taranis crouched low near a hollow oak, flint blade across his lap. He had not lit a fire. Fire betrayed you. Fire drew eyes.
But still eyes found him.
Two pairs.
One black, one white.
Both wolves. Both silent. Both watching from the mist beyond the briar.
He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
The white one larger, its coat matted with burrs stepped ahead. A long scar dragged across its eye, but the eye still burned red. Not the red of rage, but of knowing. Of memory.
The smaller wolf circled left. Her coat was black as smoke and moved like shadow even under moonlight.
Still, Taranis did not move. This was not a hunt. Not a threat. This was a test.
When the white wolf sat, the black one joined him.
They stared.
And then they spoke.
Not aloud not in the way people do but in the marrow of his bones. In the beat of his pulse. In the dreams he hadn’t yet had.
“You carry the storm. Not all storms destroy.”
He blinked. He gripped the flint tighter.
“We are not what we seem. Nor are you.”
Then, the black wolf Boldolph moved first. He stepped to the base of the hollow tree and pawed at the ground. When he pulled back, there was something in the soil. A ring of old stones. A feather. A scrap of iron, ancient before iron had names.
The white wolf Morrigan touched it with her snout.
And in a moment that split the world like thunder, they changed.
Two wolves became two people. Not naked, not fully human, but forms caught between part smoke, part bone, part memory. She bore a crow’s wing in her braid. He had a jaw shaped not by age, but by sorrow.
Taranis did not flinch. The storm inside him had seen worse. Had survived worse.
Morrigan reached ahead and laid the feather at his feet.
“Blood forgets. But stone remembers. You are carved already.”
Boldolph raised his hand, three fingers missing. Still, he gestured not in threat, but in oath.
“This forest sees you. You are not alone.”
And just like that, they were wolves again.
Gone into the mist.
Only the feather remained.
And the storm inside Taranis? It no longer howled alone.
© written and created by ElHewitt
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