This is a rough draft piece of writing pre editing. I was asked earlier what is my writing process? (So bare with me I’m expecting complaints the grammar is poor and spelling mistakes )
My first stage is always research and planning. What was life like? What did they eat? What did they drink? Forgotten history? Mythology and folklore? Haunting?
Second stage is rough draft of story poem or recipe. Yes my family are made to try the recipes what do you think of the recipes? Have you tried them? What do you think of my stories? Poems ?
Third stage after writing the rough ill read it through several times. Then plagurism check through grammarly. I will then take rough copy to chatgpt for a light edit and correction on any spelling and review.
Four stage rewrite adding alterations and back to grammarly for checks to ensure originality of my work no plagurism and I’m happy.
once I’m happy then I post images are through chatgpt mainly, canva or wp via creator given very specific details for the image.
The youngest of three lords, the only surviving heir before the word chieftain had even been carved into stone.
I was a protector, a trader,
a traveller to far shores… but above all, I was a husband and a father.
Morrigan.
She was everything. Three children had blessed our home and that was enough.
It was all her body can carry after the night she met the old crone in the woods.
The one whose words still haunt me. “The howl will return to your house, but not in the way you dream.”
I remember that day like thunder.
I had walked the long trail from the hunt., a wolf’s pelt across my shoulders, the carved head resting like a crown.
There was smoke above the village. And shouting.
An old woman beaten, clothes torn was being dragged toward my father’s cave.
“Wait!” I shouted.
I stepped ahead eighteen, tall, muscle-bound, burning with promise. They said I would one day unite the valleys.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded.
A freckled, tattooed man stepped ahead, fury carved into every line of his face.
“This enchantress worked against us in the last battle,” he spat. “She betrayed us, Boldolph. We demand justice for our dead.”
My jaw clenched. I turned to her.
“You?” I growled. “You’re the reason my brothers now sleep the eternal sleep? The reason my mother weeps? The reason the blood of my people feeds the grass?”
She said nothing.
With a roar, I seized her hauled her high above the firepit, as if ready to cast her into flame.
But then “NO!”
A voice like wind cut through the rage.
Morrigan.
Only she reach me. Only she still the fire in my chest.
“This is not you, my love,” she said. “Let the chieftain decide. Please…”
And I listened. Because she was the one thing I would never fight.
I carried the woman into the cave.
The chieftain stood waiting. Red-haired, tattooed in victory and sorrow, wise beyond warriors.
“I have heard your crimes, Whitehair,” he said, voice like stone. “You drugged the warriors. You let the enemy pass through us like wind through grass. You gave our children to fire. You made the wombs of mothers empty.”
Still, the woman did not plead.
“Death is too easy,” he continued.
“You will be taken to the deepest part of the wood. Stripped of your name. Your hands will be marked so that the spirits do not recognise you. You will eat only what you can dig or steal. None shall speak your name, nor carve it. You will walk in silence until the earth swallows you. Or until the wolves forget your scent. So say the spirits. So says the tribe.”
And so she was cast out not as woman, not as witch. As nothing.
But my rage had not cooled.
“Father, banishment is too easy for one who knows these lands,” I said. “Bind her. Take her children. Take her tongue, and theirs,so none curse us again.”
And that’s when she finally spoke.
Her voice was dry like wind over bones. “I curse thee, Boldolph… son of Marnak. And thy wife Morrigan, daughter of Ayr. You shall be wolves until the day you meet a boy. a giant of seven feet, who befriends all animals and dragons. The house of your father will fall.”
The pain came instantly.
My darling wife and I we transformed, howling and breaking, before the entire tribe.
Thousands of years have passed since that day. Many cubs later, we have never seen each other in human form.
I bear black fur as dark as night. a golden five-pointed star on my head, a red crescent moon on my chest.
And my Morrigan… She is snow-white, with a red star between her eyes and a golden sun over her heart.
The fire crackled low, licking the belly of a fresh kill. A young deer brought down by patience and precision. Its scent mingled with pine resin, wood smoke, and the dry musk of wolf-fur.
Taranis sat cross-legged near the embers, his gray eyes fixed on nothing.
He had not spoken aloud in days. The wolves Boldolph, silent and alert. Morrigan, fierce-eyed and restless watched him as they always did, as if tethered not by duty, but by knowing.
He tore the meat with his fingers, chewing slowly, not tasting. Hunger had long become a ghost he ignored, like the grief that gnawed behind his ribs.
Then came the rustle. Too light for bear. Too soft for storm.
He didn’t move. But the wolves did.
A man emerged from the trees, thin, mud-streaked, crouching low not with confidence, but desperation. He made for the meat as if pulled by instinct stronger than fear. But the moment his hand reached toward the platter of bark and stone…
A low growl stopped him.
Morrigan’s teeth shone like bone in firelight. Boldolph blocked his retreat. And Taranis finally looked up.
Their eyes met. One pair hollowed by loss, the other by starvation.
“I thought you would kill me,” the stranger whispered.
“I have,” Taranis replied, “for less.”
He stood slowly, towering over the man a figure carved by exile, his face painted with ash and time. But there was no rage in him now. Only silence. And a slow understanding.
He broke the meat in half. Handed the larger piece to the thief.
The man hesitated, then took it with shaking hands.
“What’s your name?” Taranis asked.
The man blinked. “Rhonan.”
“No longer a thief,” Taranis said, sitting again. “Tonight, you eat with me. Tomorrow, you hunt beside me. And if you run…” He glanced to Morrigan. “You’ll not outrun the black one.”
Rhonan gave a breath that was a laugh, or a sob.
And for the first time in many moons, Taranis chewed his meat and tasted it.
From the author:
This story bridges two truths: that hunger drives desperation, and that mercy can be stronger than fear. Taranis’s decision not to punish the man reflects a deeper shift. one from raw survival to the beginnings of community, yet small.
If you’ve ever chosen kindness when the world expected cruelty this story is for you.
StormborneLore 