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WARNING: This thread contains material exceeding the general board rating of PG-13. It may contain graphic violence and other disturbing content. Reader discretion is advised. |
The dreams. It had to be the dreams.
There had been none since he had crossed the mountains, or none that he had remembered. He would wake with images buzzing in his mind, but like fragile cobwebs they would fade at his mind’s touch. The few pictures that he managed to grasp had turned out to disappoint him, such as the sight of the steel towers rising from the city, which had been barren.
Ephraim was starved of his dreams. It was why he was so lost walking among his apparent comrades; the dreams had always guided him one way or another, luring him onward toward some adventure. He had dreamed of packs over the mountain, a great and bountiful land more beautiful than his ice-locked tundra home, but those visions had not come true either. Perhaps the prophecy broken by war had disrupted the weave of dreams.
It was the only cause he could think of. He was too fearful to walk on four legs among the Tribe, seeing their former chief fixed in that shape for the sake of shame. He did not want to be seen as lowly, though he knew he was more monster than man. Blood whispered such tempting things when it dropped onto his tongue, and he could not control himself. Killing the guardian that had held the prisoners captive had been a taste of that madness, and even as he suppressed it and proudly watched his dear friend run home again, it had taken so much.
Starved, always starving, starved of freedom and dreams.
So hungry, the eunuch breathed, walking down the other side of the mountain pass as the snow whipped around his thick coat. His distended stomach slid across a rock as he stepped over it, turning his head to and fro, nose to the air. But he did not know what he was hungriest for: meat or a dream or the home waiting for him in Cercatori d’Arte. In a last ditch effort to find belonging, the old man had finally contemplated leaving his Tribe even after rejecting Sky’s offers at least three times. He did not abandon his gut feelings easily, but common sense would be to go where there were friends, friends and puppies, rather than a set of strangers that still saw him as a pity, a captured former prisoner.
But he had spent nights in Sky’s home, stretched out on the floor like a big dog, his fluffy tail sweeping over Tameri when she came to greet him. Despite his fierce love for them all, for them and the friendly faces he’d glimpsed on his other visits, he knew that d’Arte was not for him either. It gave him no dreams, only longing without a direction to go.
An omega is not used to making its own decisions, and Ephraim was too used to playing the part of an omega. Other luperci told him to do things and so he did. If he didn’t have anyone to guide him, as was often the case during those cold months in the northern wastelands, he reverted to animal instinct and simply did as his body instructed him to: eat this, avoid that, walk there, piss here.
Is that all that will be left to me, if the dreams do not return?
And those were his last waking thoughts that week, before his hunger burst from his chest in a wild howl and he began to pace after a winter-weak moose on the other side of the mountains. He tracked it for days through snow and mud and sleet, until his pelt was ragged and his eyes glazed and his belly fur caked with all the kinds of shit that he’d walked through. At last, it got its leg stuck in ice or twisted something, because it lost balance and careened downward, and Ephraim was there, and his teeth were spilling the contents of its abdomen, rending the stomach wall and eating the flesh and the half-digested pine needles within.
With his belly full for the first time in weeks, the wolf regained enough sense to drag himself away from the carcass and find somewhere more secluded to sleep. He licked the blood from his white jaws then went into a full grooming session, tongue lapping over the neatly partitioned fur that was evidence of his dog heritage. It wasn’t a very natural habit for one who’d rather roll in clean snow or romp through water to dislodge the worst of debris from his coat, but it was monotonous and gave him something to do rather than guard what was left of the moose. He hadn’t been hungry for so long that his mind was completely lost; at least he’d gone for something that was actually prey this time.
Sighing, Ephraim let his broad head loll onto his paws, closing his brown eyes and curling close in on himself. Exhaustion had already plagued him for a month now, but it relinquished its claim to sleep at last.
And he dreamed.
It was as if he had been blind, opening his eyes for the first time to the fuzzy images around him, delighting that he saw more than in what he saw. The forest of his birth rose up around him, and the wolves and wolf-dogs of his unnamed pack sang out their familiar melodies.
Home! Ephraim thought, bounding through the January snow and over the iced streams and frigid cattails. Home, I’m to go home!
His destination had been found at last, now that he had seen, as what was seen would always come to pass. The implications of this glimpse of the future thrilled him, as it had been four years since he’d seen this land, five years since he’d been able to romp as a carefree boy. The thought that his birthday, the first day of the year, had recently passed only made him more wistful to settle again, if that was what the dream asked of him. He was getting old, prematurely so, and the desire to rest was stronger than the desire to skip like a buffoon.
But there was something achingly familiar about the scenery. He expected to recognize his old birthplace, but the resemblance to his memory was uncanny: less like a revisited place and more like déjà vu.
Ephraim tried to stop, to pause long enough to think and gather his bearings, but his paws skidded on ice. He spun around, heart leaping in his throat as he realized he’d stepped out onto the wide river. After the thaw, the pack fishermen would come out in canoes and in various forms to drop nets and lines and spears or capture trout with their more natural weapons; it was the livelihood and defining feature of the pack. But when the water froze…
There was yapping and giggling behind him. And the old wolf realized his trembling legs were lean and firm again, and when he sobbed a warning, his voice was young, a year-old voice.
The ice cracked. The first wolf cub skidded toward him, bounced off his leg. The others followed. One had a blue eye, he remembered that, because that eye and its brown companion fixed on him moments before the young husky lurched and the world dropped.
“No!” Ephraim screamed. But this was a dream, he remembered this was a dream; even if one of his darkest memories was being relived, he could put an end to it. He lunged forward and grabbed for the scruff of the nearest pup, but the one underneath his chin slipped, and his forepaws skidded, and he crashed into the freezing water with them. Lips wrinkled back, and teeth sank into fur again, clutching the child so hard that it squealed. He tasted blood and water, his claws made scritchy noises against the ice, but even as he used all of his yearling strength to pull himself onto firm ground, the puppy was no longer in his mouth.
Soaking and trembling, he threw himself in the snow face down. “No, I didn’t do it,” he bawled even before the first pack wolf showed up. “I tried to help them; they fell; they slipped; it isn’t my fault!” His crying turned to screaming as the alpha hauled him further away from the churning water, where only one of the tiny bodies would resurface; the others would remain trapped somewhere under the ice, somewhere else along the current.
Ephy had to make them understand. He loved babies. He wanted to father so many babies of his own, so he could raise them and watch them get big and teach them to hunt and play with them. He had to stop their jaws, had to squirm as they held his hips down, as the alpha’s teeth came down. But even if he’d remembered that this was a dream, there was nothing to do.
Teeth cut in his belly. Paws scrabbled in the dirt, pinned body writhed. Someone screamed. It was him.
His manhood was tossed into the snow.
Sobbing, Ephraim woke. He put his nose between his paws and shuddered until he was able to make himself forget the last traces of the dream, the sudden moment where all his hopes had turned on him. He rolled onto his back, staring bleakly at the naked branches clattering against each other. One paw ventured southward along his swollen belly to the thick fur nestled along his crotch, touching the scars underneath, and with a weak moan, the old man buried his face again, hoping to smother himself with the snow.
Despite the night terrors that took hold of him every night, each more futile to resist than the last, the wolfdog ventured north toward his home. What happened in the dream did not matter; it was something that he had to obey.
It was several days before he met another canine again: a coyote that tracked him out of sheer curiosity. She sniffed at him, squinted, began to chase him when she saw that he was bothered. He whirled and bared his teeth, but she only cackled and leaped to and fro, questioning what he was.
A lifetime ago, Ephraim might have chortled and made a joke and played the part of a fool until he could gain something from the coyote. But as she laughed and pointed out that he smelled neither male nor female, he only turned away and began to walk onwards again.
Days passed into weeks and into another month. Spring was not far away, and a more hopeful wolf might have been able to taste it on the breeze. They would know how to count time well enough to look forward to the passing nights, but for Ephraim, growing haggard from the often sleepless nights, the future ceased to exist. An animal did not look ahead, only went through the motions of preparation.
History repeated itself. As the times grew hard again, and the prey began to die off from cold rather than other natural causes, and Ephraim started to revert once more. He urinated on whatever dead animal he could find, and snarled and bristled and snapped salivating jaws at invisible enemies when the frosty gales stirred up the slightest sound. As his dreams continued to repeat, so did his life, and once again he was helpless to change the course of the cycle.
Few others remained to challenge him for his kills and those corpses found too frozen to rot out in the waste. No one would come near the insane old-timer, and so the wolf was able to eat his frigid meat in peace. He slept buried in the snow, nose tucked under his bushy tail, and rose like some grey zombie to eat again. His teeth cracked against the frozen bones, but even then there was soon nothing left.
Intelligence sparked in the old wasted brain. A conscious idea formed for the first time in a month. The wolf loped from the empty skeleton and began to welcome back Ephraim Fisher, though the process was imperfect. Ephraim Fisher ceased to exist in the starving-time. Ephraim Fisher was a creature capable of kindness and mercy, a creature who wanted companionship for the love of friends. The old wolf was neither of these things.
The old wolf changed his howl from that of possession and aggression to one of friendship and naivety. He galloped for miles through the howling snow, digging in the permafrost when he became too restless to lay still and too exhausted to move onward again. The stars whirled overhead, the moon rising and setting several times before he finally found his own kind.
The alpha that approached him on the borders was not fully sentient either, or at least sentient in that it was more than a beast. It carried the quiet intelligence of a non-luperci though, content to be no more than what it was. It was not pleased with the sight of a stranger during these lean times. It conversed briefly with its mate and decided to venture toward the stranger on its own. The pack was strong compared to others that had struggled to keep up their numbers; it had put use into the previous litters rather than cast them away out of desperation. Meat was thinly distributed, most of the portion going to the pregnant alpha, but meat was found. They would survive through this winter famine.
Ears pricked and tail lifted at the sight of the old wolf that rolled around outside of the border markings. The wolfdog smelled of age, of disease, of wrongness. The alpha backed up a step.
Ephraim only whimpered, simpered, crawled on his belly toward the other canine. His tongue shot out to touch the other’s chin and lips, only to be bitten. He swallowed his own blood and pulled his mouth in a befitting grin of submission and fear, ears almost disappearing into his skull.
Reluctantly, the alpha stepped forward. It might have been as xenophobic as any natural wolf had the right to be, but the last few strangers that had crossed through in the spring had had a weird scent, and weird belongings. Things had been wrapped around their necks, odd-looking things. As unfamiliar with luperci as the alpha was in this extremely isolated part of the far north, it had been more curious than afraid, and it had cleverly stolen one of the things: a necklace.
And this old wolf had a thing too: worn cloth around his neck, ragged though it was. It might have covered his shoulders at one point. The alpha considered, and the alpha wanted it.
Its nose came close, and with a delighted noise, Ephraim jumped for its throat.
He ate the wolf there on the borders. It was not the first nor the last. Even when the thaw came and the bodies were reclaimed by the earth, Ephraim did not return. He had walked too far out of himself to remember, and so he gleefully chased spindly newborn caribou and paraded with ptarmigan feathers stuck to his mouth when the weather was warm.
No more dreams came. The wolf had no need of dreams. He had ceased to become anything more than an animal, separated long ago from his home, too hurt from false leads and ruined prophecies to continue on. He lived his life without any of the hideous choices, without feeling the need to belong. He ceased to become a man.
Though Ephraim had never truly been a man.