zg_shadows | Random NPC piece - set after the scene last night

Forty years is a long time for a wolf.

Of course, the wolf had not been born wearing her wolfskin. She had been something else, a long long time ago, before she caught the scent of the fierce wyld wind. She no longer remembered the details of what she had been; a monkey of some kind, but even then without the quickness and the babble that she associated with monkeys today. She had had no pack, and she mostly remembered an odd emptiness and an aching loneliness that had only faded when a barefoot girl had first heard the howl of the wolf kind.

The wolf wrinkled her nose.

That was a long time ago as well; longer than this wolf cared to remember. There had been a mate - the first mate she had taken - who had taught her more than she had taught him. He had given her the wolf in truth, rather than simply in form, and for that she did sometimes still offer up a quiet prayer of thanks for him.

Across the glade from where she lay, the Sept were gathering. Lupus lay together in packs, full with rich meat, enjoying the warmth of the fire. A few of the garou had taken on monkeyskins, and were now gorging themselves on peculiar smelling brews. The children who had not yet changed, but for whom there was still hope, had also been brought up from the farmhouse where they stayed.

The wolf saw a familiar face amongst the children and sighed. Her granddaughter, Morgan McKipsie, was watching the gathering with an unreadable expression. Her features were the sharp, delicate features of her mother - fierce, wild Labai - and her eyes were as dark as her father's. Her expression, however, was her own and always had been. She smiled less often than she should. She spoke of strange things, and knew more than a child should. It was not good, thought the wolf, for a cub to be reared without mother. Yet Labai had been needed in the battle that had killed her. She was strong and fast. She had saved the lives of three of the Sept's cubs before she had fallen and she would not have chosen any other path.

The wolf sighed.

She had little family left, and she did not want to see her line die out. Maybe that was the last remnants of a monkey's pride? Did it matter if her monkey spawn kept growing and multiplying? She should look to the future of the wolf, and be proud that their numbers were growing on her territory, even if elsewhere they continued to fade. There were four new litters due in the weeks to follow, and two of those would bring fresh strong blood into the breeding population. She had held Griffin's Glen inviolate, a pure wyld caern, for more than twenty years now, and she was still strong.

Yet her eyes drifted back to her granddaughter, who seemed to be busily scratching in the dirt with a stick, and an odd sense of forboding ran through her.

She did not shift form, and so the monkey words remained unsaid.

"This shall be the last great victory of my people. The tide is flowing towards us, and the dark waters are rising. The end is near."

She lifted her head again and saw Morgan gazing back at her. The child nodded as if she had heard the old wolf's thoughts. Then she smiled and turned back towards her intricate patterns in the sand.