bottle of red, bottle of white

[Razekiel Lykoi]

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At Jefferson's growl of a voice, Razekiel sensed tension rise in the little songbird's form; it quivered beneath his fingertip as if listening to the horrid roar of a monster, and at the coyote perked his dark ears and covered it with his hand. Beneath his palm the chickadee balled up and ceased its anxiety, sheltered by the hippie's sanctuary as if the coyote were an appropriate shield against such a scarred and disfigured beast. Certainly Razekiel did not think himself as such, though perhaps the little bird did; he was only a man of the earth and sky, blessed by the Great Mother herself, in ways Jefferson would never be.

The coyote's smile faded quickly. In that voice he sensed a darkness left unidentified, evidenced further by the chickadee's quivering. The Valley Patriarch had a connection to the peaceful French pack of central Canada, but how? The coyote hardly expected the scarred man to be capable of such a beautiful language — in fact, it might be heresy for such a creature to speak something so lovely, but Razekiel was not about to mention that. The coyote watched him a long moment, silent; somewhere above the birds dispersed from the treetops in a flurry of chatter and feathers, and suddenly the coyote began to realize exactly what made Jefferson the grim old man he was.

"They are well," he said unsurely at first, then burst back into his normal optimism, though forced, to hide what he had silently learned from the Great Mother's whispers of advice in the world around him. "Oh, yeah, totally groovy, man! We were both bummin' out up in the mountains when that badass snowstorm hit, so I got to chill out — ahahaha, chill out, it was a snowstorm, you get it?! — with 'em till Mother thought it best we leave and moved the weather for us. Went back to righteous Quebec with 'em, you dig? Pretty big pack, lots of wolves. Real cherry, man, I was real jazzed to stick with 'em. Guess they were lookin' for a couple of kids up in the mountains, but went home after. I guess they're kinda scared of these parts, man. Don't blame 'em."