silent-murmer

[continued from previous]

And - Alpha's lips curled at the edges - this new development in the age-old tradition will be interesting. If Orysh's mighty paw guides this event, who is he to deny the great god of the skies?

In a single, fluid motion, Alpha stood, stretching languidly as he did so, his muscles rippling in Orysh's light. He looked down at the still-crouched Mina, who looked up at the pack leader expectantly. There was a glimmer for the Hunt in her sharp blue eyes.

As Orysh began his daily descent, two wolves - one as black as the silken night and the other a delicate dappled grey - melted into the forest, turning their back upon the blistering heat emanating from Orysh's Run. They will return a week from now, to welcome the remaining wolf wholly into the pack.

~~

Night fell, and Faryn discovered that the hostile terrain that was so blistering on his body became more tolerable. The two had raced for half the afternoon, making good pace before the heat of the sands and the fire in their bodies forced them to a panting stop. Even culturing a shelter by digging down into the cooler depths of the sands was an effort.

For the first time, Faryn felt shame for hiding from their deity's fiery embrace. Shame, then confusion. Orysh, who grants them the light of warmth during the day and comfort of fire during the night. Can this be the same Orysh that blazes over this blistering wasteland? Faryn found it a difficult concept to grasp.

Faryn heard the sounds of paws, and realised Cyph was already on the move again.

Telling himself he would think about this later, when they rested again, Faryn scrabbled out of his makeshift den and bounded forward into the open.

The cold hit him like a falling tree. The wind - its howling dry scream incessant across the dunes - stole the heat from his chest, staggering him in its wake. Without Orysh in the sky, the blistering desert had become a frigid and equally hostile wasteland. The summer coat of Faryn's wolf form barely withstood the chill.

Stunned by the violent changes in temperature, Faryn could just see  the figure of his other companion hazily as it reached the top of a dune, his silhouette outlined in silver that the fleet moon deer cast, even as he struggled to regain some countenance.

Cyph turned to look back at Faryn, his eyes flashing in the night. Then, silently, with the flick of a tail, the wolf disappeared, leaving the splay-legged wolf to stand there recovering from the sudden chill.

Faryn felt a spark of anger. Snatching at it, Faryn's mouth opened and closed in a snarling snap, jolting his entire body out of its stunned stupor. Fur ruffled in the wind, the brown wolf goaded himself into a loping gait that followed the other wolf up the dune and over.

The Run had only started.

[sorry about this again. I've just had three fillings done down the left jaw because I eeties too muchly lollies. Suffering from aaaaches]

Alpha watched the two wolves run into the desert, the bronze-haired taking the lead by a few yards. His golden eyes, inset in his dark features and even darker hair, flashed with short reminiscence.

The lightest touch on his shoulder alerted him to one of the women of the pack. Most likely, it would be Mina. She was always quieter and more skilled in sneaking up on him than the others.

"They will be alright?" her voice was shy, questing. Alpha, his human form covered barely by the furs of his victories, managed a noncommittal grunt as he followed the path of the retreating pair disappear over a sand dune.

"One will live. It has always been that way," was his reply after a moment more, when he was certain the young wolves will not be turning back. He turned and put a scarred hand on the slender shoulder of the woman, his eyes gentle and just a little sad.

"It is Orysh's Will. You know that."

Mina's blue eyes looked mournful in her pale face.
"I know."
There was something more in her words. Alpha sensed it. The sharp jerk of his head to the subtle emotions made Mina almost flinch.

"Tell me."
A command from the pack leader. Mina looked frightened for a moment. Alpha detected the aroma of fear, despite his human form and the inferior sinuses. But he knew that Mina was not one to disobey a direct order from the man - and wolf - that had led them through both prosperity and strife flawlessly.

"I have had... dreams. I have heard the voices," Mina admitted, flinching as she heard the sharp indrawn breath. But there was no further comment, which told Mina to go on.
"I... asked. They told me of this Run. They told me it would be special." She spread her hands helplessly, "I know of nothing else but this certainty."

Alpha was quiet for a bit, and the contemplative look on his rugged face sparked Mina's curiosity over her fear of retribution.
"Then we will wait for their return."

Mina relaxed visibly, and inwardly, Alpha smiled. To discover that one of his favourite ladies was also very deeply linked to the Messengers of Orysh himself was a surprise.

[Urgh... this time's cutoff is particularly bad. I'm going to apologise, it'll get better, but it's because i accidentally posted this too late in the day, and I have an exam tomorrow... bleah]

It was high noon when Faryn's paws touched the salted sands of his destination's entrance. The wolf, his bronze fur ruffling in the howling winds that shrieked from the salt steppes, gazed out to a desolate scene.

He had seen it from a distance before, once. The pack was traveling, and a chance elevation allowed Faryn to peek at the strange, shimmering desert that they called Orysh's Run.

It was really a stretch of salt-crusted desert, barren of everything but the most hardy of creatures - and even they were almost too quick to flee the harsh, burning glare of the sun and the burning hot sands under their feet, if it weren't for the fact that they were so adapted that to live away from the desert would mean to die.

Faryn wasn't alone in the Run. Beside him was another wolf just barely into his nineteenth summer, tongue lolling out in a muzzle stretched widely in a grin. There was a spark in the wolf's golden eyes.

Faryn knew the other wolf to be Cyph. But he had only played with the grey-furred cubling briefly, being not that fond of the pack member. The two tolerated each other's presence since the very beginning, but preferring other company rather than each others'. Now Faryn thought that there was some sort of bond forged between them. Maybe it was competition that drove them their separate ways. Or it could be that Cyph liked the same girl that he took a fancy too.

Faryn stopped thinking about that now. What lay before them was the Run, and he will complete it. Cyph was probably thinking that too, and Faryn wasn't about to be shown up by a cubling barely a few weeks younger than he.

Raising his head up high, his bronze mane rippling in the wind, Faryn steeled his resolve and plunged running into the desert. There was a yelp of surprise, then the sound of sand and dirt being tossed callously under clattering claws before Cyph scrabbled after the other wolf.

The Run had begun.

Dawn broke over the world where the wolf-children walked, bathing the forests and grasslands in golden-yellow and vibrant green. In the sky, just as Orysh's head peered over the horizon, the fleeting sight of the last moon deer's tail disappeared.

Faryn - like all of the Fire Runners pack - woke with Orysh's chase across the sky. His fur rippled bronze over his sleek, canine body, and his golden eyes were still slightly glazed over with sleep as he lifted his head off his sleeping place.

The alpha male was staring down at the younger wolf, which started Faryn out of his dreamy state and jolted him into human form.

"Sorry, sir! Did I sleep in?" Faryn - who now looked like a robust young man just fledging into his adulthood - found his tongue thick and unwieldy. Alpha bared his teeth in a wolfish grin, dark green eyes narrowed in mirth in a black-splashed head, before he too assumed human form and sat on the ground.

Faryn took a moment to look up slightly in quiet reverence to the pack leader that sat so casually in front of him. The older man, already well into his fiftieth winter, looked barely older than the strongest of the younger wolves in their pack, with only the subtle giveaway of age being a few wisps of graying short hair that ruffled in the breeze along with a mane of ebony. There were scars on his body, visible as pale, puckered marks over his darker-skinned countenance.

"Do you know what day it is, Faryn of Farri?" even Alpha's voice rumbled deep with the power he used to lead his pack of two and twenty.

Faryn was ready for this. He had been waiting over nineteen summers to prove himself on this day, and the answer leapt from his mouth eagerly.

"Today's the day where I run with fire."

Alpha bared his teeth again in that same, wolfish smile, nodding in acknowledgment. Faryn's heart leapt to his throat.

"Run, then, and the Fire of Orysh guide you."

In the world where three moons rise and set across the horizon, the wolves ran and called.

Sometimes, they ray on two feet, sometimes, on four. Laughter mingled with barks and yelps. The wolves reigned wholly in their dual forms, both human and animal, completely both yet neither.

The wolves, they had a god. Orysh, he was called. Orysh of the Flame. Every morning, Orysh would rise before the fleeing moons, chasing them on an eternal hunt across the skies. Sometimes, when Orysh fell behind in the hunt, he would become angry, and the heavens will darken with his ire. Lightning would flash across the skies, and the wolves would huddle in caves and the underbrush, under the rain and anger, waiting for their god's anger to subside.

And it would.

Orysh of the Flame loved his children - the wolves. He loved their dual nature and their noble spirits. One day, in the days of beginnings when Orysh was in his prime, he gifted his children with the power of fire. The wolves would never be cold at night again with the warmth of their god so close, and Orysh would be with them at night, when the chase brought him far away from their skies, and the deer-like moon flitting across the sky cast their silvery light in the wake of Orysh's fiery glory was not enough to warm the wolves.

The Children of Orysh - the wolves - celebrated their god. Three times a year, the wolves would dance among fire as their god brought down one of the moons, leaving two to flee from their mighty deity. Another would always appear though, in the old one's stead a season later, and the chase would begin anew.

But one season, things changed...