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The sky was brighter than it should be. Thick, scattered rays streamed between the trees, and she moved through the underbrush as though she were designed not to disturb it. Her feet seemed less corporeal than usual. They hardly impacted the ground as she walked, and as quiet as she knew herself to be, this was an unnatural silence born from a grace that even she did not possess. This grace — this quiet, wasn’t her own. It belonged to the haze that had enveloped everything, forming itself around the land, and the people, and her memories. The line between waking and dreaming had run together in a viscous, disorienting fog, and something had broken. She strained to remember what, but the images flickered and faded. There was only one thing that came clearly to her now.
He’d changed the world, her wolf. Slowly. So methodically as to be imperceptible until it was too late, and she’d realised with a stark finality that he had outplayed her one final time. He had won, but he had also failed. He’d willed something into motion that she was certain was irreversible. Her breath faltered, momentarily. She hesitated and then pressed on, picking a careful, deliberate path through the underbrush even though it already seemed to conform to her desire for silence. Perhaps it wasn’t real. So much of what she experienced now was difficult to parse, the reality of it mercurial. Inconsistent. It was possible that even certainty was no longer certain, simply another trick of the cognitive slurry that had consumed most of the world she’d known. Still, she forged ahead. Searching. Determined. Her unwavering drive one of the few things she’d kept since he’d left. She certainly hadn’t come out of the ordeal intact.
She resisted the urge to cast a bitter glance down at the carefully knotted sleeve of her shirt, something painful lingering in the very sight of it. What, though? She faltered again, straining in the wavering forest light to remember why she hurt. But she could not seem to pull the memory from the fog inside of her, and it melded seamlessly into itself, becoming the pain it had once invoked. An entity of its own that she could no longer bear to consider. Strange. Unnerving. Even recollection failed her now.
The thick fabric of her tunic clung to her back in a way that felt undeniably tangible, and her breath tumbled out in thick, eddying huffs. It was unusually cold, this place where the sun streamed through the trees. Cold and familiar. Perhaps it was a fabrication, with its oppressive hush, soft and dense, falling delicate, like a funeral shroud over her shoulders. And the way her thoughts shuddered and swayed in unruly waves, cast a doubt in her mind that mixed; unrestrained, with confusion and shame. She tried to concentrate, to remember what had come before, but her purpose was singular now. Find the wolf. That’s right. That was what she had been searching for. Find the wolf; Leave the rest to the ether. The rest was gone already anyway. Sacrificed to the chaos. Surviving only in echoes.
The forest moulded around her, beckoning her forward. The violent quiet of it pressed in on her, now. She knew the steps to take, though she could not recall where they led, and her feet carried her at a glide. She did not stop until the path twisted and the sky darkened. Until the sickly red glow of blight-rotted lyrium became the only source of light. The landscape around her shifted, the air warm, and stale, and thick, and the trees tangled and reaching. She pushed ahead, even as the terrain seemed to list upward at the same time that it spiralled downward, and the concepts of direction and time blended together into something incomprehensible. The fade flowed around her, tainted and desolate and wrong. And that was where she found him.
He stood alone, back turned to her, visually both a man and a wolf. The sight puzzled her, but it was also affirming. She had the distinct impression that he had always been both. She was sure now that she had found what she’d been looking for.
The wolf failed to notice her at first, but when he did turn, finally, his face was ashen and taught. The weariness of a thousand mistakes had settled into the lines, and as his sunken eyes found her, his expression contorted into something unclear. She could feel it, though. Visceral and unmistakable. The waiver of his resolve and the stifling blend of heart-heavy emotions that he fought to repress. Pain. Relief. Regret. She wished she could remember why his emotions stung.
“Vhenan,” He said, taking an unsteady step toward her and then halting, almost as if he doubted his own perception. She approached him instead, unhindered by the same force that propelled him to stop. Timid, but driven by a certainty she found curiously absent in him. She'd found what she was looking for. But what then? She stopped just short of him, something stirring within her that she could not name, and the wolf before her tensed.
“You were thinking of me,” He said, his voice rough and astonished, “You could not be here like this otherwise. Even as your world dissolved, and all around you bodies burned. When your very mortality fled, did your thoughts truly turn to me then?” He reached for her, a tremble of grasping hands brushing the curves of her cheeks, forehead resting against hers, eyes searching, mouth wanting for words. He swallowed, testing the dryness of his tongue.
“There is so little of you left,” he breathed. “If I had known…” His eyes fell, his fingers withdrawing from her, the silken tendrils of her hair slipping between them with delicate finality.
“I would have sought you out,” He concluded, “I wouldn’t have allowed what was left of you to dissipate alone. It seems I’ve played a cruel trick on us both.”
Her body gave a light shudder, as if the whole of it had rippled in response to his words, and the wolf’s face contorted in anguish. An indescribable warmth burgeoned in her, the remnants of desperation and a fierce, enraged pining that she could hardly make sense of through the fog. It was brief, though. The feeling slipped away just as easily, and she made no attempt to stop it.
“We have little time,” The wolf said, eyes trailing over her shifting form. Oh. She was changing. Something fundamental in her had fled and what was left of her was a perverse, shallow imitation of what had been. And so, naturally, it could not remain as it was. It must change. How odd. The man that was also a wolf watched her with eyes much too grave. He was torn, and the expression fit him poorly, she thought, even as he lowered his eyes.
“Ir abelas, my heart,” he breathed, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. “You will never be what you were, and you are no longer mine. You have different purpose, now.”
That was it. That was the piece she was missing. Purpose. She was purpose. She smiled, or at least she thought she did. She was no longer burdened by the desire for a face, and she rippled, bright, delicate light streaming from her as something new tugged at her from within. Something pure and needy. Something right.
“Purpose,” She repeated aloud, her voice strangely not her own. The wolf stiffened, a wash of emotions, stumbling over each other, fighting to be felt. He kept his smile in place. Forced, she realised, but genuine.
“I see,” His voice cracked. "That is your name." His shoulders slumped. He hurt. But his pain was no longer her concern. She was free from the weight of his hesitancy, and something greater pulled at her now. It wrested her attention this way and that as a hundred wanting voices sprang from the fog, compelling her to follow. She jittered in agitation, caught between the desire to heed their call and the gaze of the sullen elf before her.
“Go on,” he all but whispered, and she did. Leaving him then, both a wolf and a man, and yet, somehow, incomplete.