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Lannon sighed softly as the water coursed and flowed first around his ankles, the soft mud and rounded gravel of the riverbed settling in against his pawpads and between his toes. He looked up to the sky, took in a breath, and started further in, the water colder than he would like while still warmer than what he had expected. Down south in Solm, in the desert, only the highborn could afford water for baths: everyone else, the students included, gathered in the communal sweat-houses and waited for the grit and sludge of the day to ooze out from their fur and along the benches beneath them. The lynx smirked, closing his eyes to imagine it was the heat of one of those houses that curled slowly up around his naked body instead of the cool, steady flow of the river. Some of his visits to the houses had ended up sweatier than others.

Each time he stepped further, though, the slight chill of the water sent its sharp fingers tracing up his body and pulled him back out of his thoughts and fantasies. Lannon rubbed at an arm and steadily plodded further into the river, careful not to step on any protruding boulders or logs or, gods forbid, a crawfish or something. When explaining them to his classmates at the academy he had realized how absurd it had sounded: "Lobsters?"_Sariya had said, disbelief on her cute little musteline face. _"In your rivers? How deep are they?"

_ _

Not for the first time since departing for home, the lynx trailed off into wondering where she was now, and what kept her busy these days. Really, though, it hadn't been that long since he had last seen her: Lannon had taken a much more straightforward route home from Solm than he had when he had first departed from home to the academy, and as such, with his special arrangements to cross the desert, it had taken a little over a month for him to-

Another step deeper into the water shocked those thoughts out of his head, forcing the lynx to grit his teeth and suck in a gasp, only to let it out between those teeth a few seconds later. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten up so early, he thought, arms splayed around him as he looked around in the water that now came up to his waist. He stood up on his toes to keep it from splashing against certain much more sensitive parts of him. Then, after another moment the lynx sighed, rolled his eyes, settled in - grimaced and straightened back up - and then half-raised a paw, his other still gripping the bar of soap he had purchased in town. Just like with the lantern, the intricacies of the weave came easily to him even though it was one he hadn't had any need or opportunity to practice in such a size: mostly thin, delicate threads of Fire, each packed with power, tied together with little strings of Air to keep it stable and bound... and then, when released, the river water immediately around his legs and spreading out for a short distance heated up to something much more pleasant. Lannon sighed with relief, lowered himself down, and then waded further out into the river, finding the deepest point to settle into. He had pulled the threads of heat from the air around him, further increasing the pleasure of the water.

Magic of this type wasn't something he could tie off and set to self-sustain, so the lynx simply pushed that maintained spell to the back of his consciousness so he could instead focus on his morning bath. For a moment he just stood there enjoying the warmth of the water against the slight morning chill, this "deepest point" of the river putting the water level a little more than halfway above his waist; then he brought in that bar of soap, the same familiar scent that his father always purchased throughout his kittenhood, and worked it up to a good lather. It seemed as though Lori - he was both the soapmaker and chandler of the village, as the husband of the butcher - had started putting in little bits of flowers and other herbs. That was nice.

While he worked at himself, scrubbing off the grit and grime of the days leading up to this morning and especially of the previous night, Lannon let his mind wander again. As usual it wandered through all of his different ideas and theories regarding just what was going on in these woods, all of them changed, shifted, modified just a bit from his personal experience facing down the creature, but still the pieces didn't quite fit together. And then, also as usual, those threads of thoughts and ideas started to slip between his soap-slickened fingers and fell away instead to other memories, pleasant and relaxing, while the lynx waded back out towards the bank until the water dropped down to his waist.

Once there he began to draw the soap through the fur of his bare belly, the little bits of dried lavender and sage digging gently at his skin beneath. With his fingers coming up through his short, soft fur he closed his eyes again and drifted away, going back to the many nights spent in Solm with him wedged between an otter and a marten in the bed they unofficially shared. The smile returned to his muzzle, and for a moment he slowed in his washing to enjoy the warmth that he imagined was their bodies wrapped on his. Then it fell away as he realized the warmth stopped a little bit above his bare hips, and again the lynx set soap to fur, working further up his chest.

It was pleasant. Being out here in the woods near his home, the trees and plants all around the river, the sounds of the forest, the scent and taste of the air, all felt so familiar to him. Lannon sighed again and smiled, humming softly to himself. It was a song that his mother used to sing to him, and one that his father took up after her death when the kitten couldn't sleep at night. The rumors of the things in the forest had begun all the way back then, and fresh and new they seemed so much more horrifying, especially to a young lynx like himself.

There were words to it, in the common tongue of course. He remembered most of them and thought he could fill in the blanks for the rest. Lannon began singing softly, then coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again.

"...eagle's cry, on the wind's whisper, on the storm's rumble... you will hear me, for as long as you love me. ...feel alone... to the sky, to the sun, to the clouds... stars and moon... looking back, for as long as you love me..."

Lannon grimaced again. Maybe not all of the blanks. He gave up singing it and went back to humming instead, making a mental note to himself to try to dig the other verses out of his memory later. The aroma of lavender and sage curled up around him, underlined by the somewhat musty scent of the river water and of the forest around him; the lynx bent over again and again to drag the soap across his body and then wash it off, careful at the pinpoint scar along the front of his chest.

It still stung a little bit every now and then; it had been his first usage of Spirit magic, even though he hadn't really known it back then, and as such perhaps wasn't the most efficiently done. Each touch to the little puckered section of silver-white skin, angled and torn where the arrowhead had punched through, sent a little shock through his arm and made his fingers twitch; Lannon gently rubbed that spot with a soapy fingerpad and then sighed, moving on to his shoulders and head.

Then, though, he stopped, and took a moment to listen to the sounds around him. There was the wind, and the whispering of the trees and creaking of branches; there was the soft burbling of the river all around him, the little splashes along the banks and the distant, quiet roar of a small waterfall further along its course; and then there was nothing else. Again. The melody of his mother's song died on his lips and the lynx turned in place, eyes scanning from one bank to the next. Slowly he became aware of the same feeling as well, that odd, elusive oppressiveness in the air. Like intense humidity on a cold day, or the tension that came the night before an exam back at the academy. Something just felt stifled.

Lannon turned around again and then finally saw it, there between the trees, hunched over behind a bush, single yellow eye watching him. It was hard to see back there, tattered and rugged fur blending in with the bark and shadows surrounding it, but that eye shone bright and vile. The lynx nearly forgot about the soap in his paw, he was so focused on the thing - even in the misshapen daylight filtering down through the trees over its head he could hardly get a good look on it, his mind filling in the gaps from what he had seen the previous night.

As he watched it, as it watched him, it shifted and began to straighten up a bit. Or, at least, it rose up on its legs though its back and shoulders remained hunched: it reached up to a low-hanging branch - relatively: Lannon would not have been able to reach it, even had he had a boulder upon which to stand - and sniffed at the air, its glistening black lips pulling back to show those same sharp teeth as it did so. It took one slow, lumbering step forward, and then another. Lannon perked his ears to listen for the footsteps which may or may not have even been there, though he knew he would not be able to hear them at this distance.

Then, he remembered. Slowly, carefully, never taking his gaze off of it, the lynx began putting together that same so-familiar spell with which he had continually searched the forest around him the previous day. Right as he wove it together that one yellow eye fixed on him and the lips pulled back again, though the beast then lowered its head and sniffed in the direction of his clothes sitting on a rock on the bank. Lannon took that moment to release the spell, this time sending it in a focused trail towards the thing in the trees.

It wasn't something he could truly, physically see, of course. The threads of magic did not take a physical form, or at least not one that an untrained student would expect, beyond the general 'sense' that trained mage could pull from them: Fire magic took the form of currents of heat, Air as changes in the breeze, and so on. Spirit, as far as Lannon could tell, manifested as a small burst of life, a strengthening in the plants through which it passed or a revitalization of flesh when he sent the threads through his own or someone else's. This time he watched the telltale signs as they passed through first the water, then the bank, and then the bushes lining the trees, his magical senses hooking on to the woven spell itself as he could sense it. Still the beast half-crouched at the edge of the trees, slowly coming toward him, nose constantly curling as it sniffed at his scent and toward his things. The spell approached, wrapped around the beast, curled its thin, delicate fingers about its presence...

...and then burst and, finally, dissipated. The thing jerked as though startled and then rose to its full height, this the first time that Lannon had seen it fully out of the cover of the forest. Standing there, full and formidable, it seemed to roll its head on its neck for a moment, and then immediately turned to fix that single yellow eye on the lynx where he stood still naked halfway in the water of the river. Slowly he covered his nudity with his other paw, his mind going back through all of the rumors and superstitions he had heard, trying to sort through which ones could and could not enter or cross moving water, all the while keeping a close eye on the beast there halfway between the trees and the riverbank. Between all of this the lynx lost his concentration on his other spell, and jerked in place as the artificially-placed strands of Fire lifted from the water and returned it to its original chill around him.

The thing took one more step forward, its body following the course of the movement so that it hunched over again. Its ragged ears pinned back towards its head, its lips curled back, its nose wrinkled, and it snarled. Lannon half-stepped back in the water and nearly tripped over a smooth stone, but luckily caught himself before he would have fallen. Then it straightened back up, looked at the lynx one more time, and turned to leave, plodding away while still standing upright. Almost more man than animal. Lannon watched until he could see it no longer and then, still facing the shore, finished up his bath.

~ ~ ~

Day 9

Morning

_ _

I dreamt of a wolfess. A huntress. Or - a Huntress. She came to me through the woods while I was gathering fruit, the light seeming to follow her as she went. She had pure, clean white fur and sharp yellow eyes, the eyes of a predator, the same eyes as the beast, but hers were sharper and brighter. Much like the forest itself: exactly the same, yet somehow different.

She approached me and stopped a ways off. I looked up from what I was doing, I don't remember what, and waited, but she just watched me. Instead of one companion she had four, each coming out from behind or around her at a different time: two large, old males, distinct from one another in their own ways, and then two females, one young and small and the other a little older, supple. That one came up and sat at her side, and the huntress reached down to pat between her ears.

_ _

"What do you want?" I asked of them. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

_ _

The huntress smiled to that. I didn't know the questions in the old tongue, but as I was trying to form them, she instead asked the very same three of me. At first I wondered how she could know such a thing; then I realized she might have just been mirroring my own pronunciation; and then I thought about how she had said them so confidently.

_ _

Then I realized that she was indeed speaking the old tongue. But still I could understand her, and she could understand me. The huntress paused and tilted her head, and I felt as though she were investigating me. Like she were looking over my clothing, my face, my earrings, and learning who I was from these traits alone.

_ _

She made it seem easy. "Lannon," she said after a moment. "You are Lannon. And you are tampering with things you do not understand."

_ _

I looked down at what I was doing, at the basket of fruit I had taken with me out into the woods. It was filled not with fruit but with rocks instead, smooth river rocks. As I looked, one of them caught my eye: I set the basket down, still feeling as though it were full of little fruits instead of rocks, and pulled it out. It was a smooth, rounded bit of amber, with something caught inside.

_ _

"Well," I answered, looking back up to her from the amber. She and her wolves had come closer in the meantime. She was wearing something, but I can't recall what. "That's exactly why I'm tampering with it. So that I can understand it."

_ _

For a moment something flashed across her face. Then she was directly in front of me again, with one of the male companions sniffing at my ear and the other nosing at my shoulder. The female sat a short ways off, though she watched me with keen interest. I couldn't take my eyes off of that one, at least not until the huntress knelt down right in front of me so that I could feel the heat coming off of her body. Or, at least, so that I should have been able to feel it, even though I couldn't.

_ _

"You do not belong here," she said, more in a murmur this time. The huntress reached up with one paw and traced her fingerpads over the piercings in my ear - the chain, the studs, the bar. The touch made me shiver, and the look on her face showed that she knew that would be my response. "The forest is your neighbor, not your home. Let nature takes its course."

_ _

That one paw still on my ear, now rubbing softly, she moved her other down to lightly tease my fingers open and take the amber from me. It was nearly the same color as her eyes, the amber slightly darker and glittering in the sunlight coming down through the trees, totally still in the lack of a breeze. There was a small iridescent beetle caught inside the amber, and as she held it it began wriggling and squirming, then swam through the stone as if it were liquid and crawled out onto the back of her white-furred paw. She turned it over and held it closed lightly in her paw; I offered a palm, and she let the beetle down into it. Then, she closed my fingers over it, so that I could feel its little legs and antennae squirming.

_ _

"Go," she told me, paw finally falling from my ear. Even after I woke up I could still feel the little shivers from that touch. "Back to your books and your studies. There is no place for you here, Lannon Asaros. Let me never see you again." And she stood, still clutching the now empty amber in her fist, and turned to leave. I watched as she went back between the trees, until she seemed to dissipate in the beams of sunlight coming down. The eldest and youngest of her companions followed after her, with the other male trailing next, but still the other female sat there near the trunk of a tree, eyes focused on me, head slightly tilted, as though she wanted something.

_ _

I looked at her, and she looked at me. And I shook my head. "No," I said. "I'm not done yet." For a moment longer she watched me and then she, too, stood to leave, though she looked back at the last moment.

_ _

That left me with a distinct feeling upon waking up, the same impression when I know I have a task that must be done, even if my half-asleep brain can't remember what.

_ _

On an unrelated note: there is a young chamomile patch between the hut and the river, along the crest of one of the ridges overlooking the bend. Making a special note to go back and harvest it when it blooms later in the summer.

_ _

~ ~ ~

Day 10

Evening

_ _

Today was mostly uneventful. At first I thought something had been changed, that a lever had been pulled: a week spent here with nothing happening, and then I see him not once but twice, back to back, one day after the other. I spent most of today fishing, gathering ingredients, and then hunting in the afternoon, all of which also turned out fairly uneventful. It had been ages since I'd last handled a bow and arrow, though, and while practicing on the large tree that provided some shelter to the hut from the rain, I began wondering whether it would not be easier just to use my magic to lure and capture some prey.

_ _

But I could still feel the eyes of the forest on me, even if I hadn't seen them for a while. I knew they were still out there, and I knew that I was still simply permitted to stay here. So I must abide by their rules. After practicing for a while and coming to a passable familiarity, I headed back out into the woods, the area around the hut feeling more like home now that I had become more acquainted with it. So I took the bow I had purchased in town before coming out here and the quiver of five or so arrows, and headed out. This time I went in the opposite direction of the river, if only to see some new things - and since I thought that I had spent less time over there, that there might be more wildlife.

_ _

In a way I was right. And I stated that today was only "mostly" uneventful; I was also right, here.

...

Lannon watched the stag as it trotted between the trees, the lynx able to see the little pulsing and tightening of supple sinews beneath its hide with each slow, careful step, and every time it turned its head towards some unfitting sound out in the woods. He had been watching it for a while now, trailing it at a distance through the trees while waiting for it to show its flank, or its side, or something that he could aim at.

For various reasons his father was prevented from hunting, and thus Lannon as a kitten had been taught how to take it up quite early in life. Everything he did now came with the vague familiarity that showed his muscles remembered better than his mind, and even so, he had never been particularly robust: whenever he set arrow to string and drew it back towards - but not against - his cheek, he could only hold it for a couple of seconds before one of his arms started shaking, and then the other would follow shortly as well. Really, the reason he had stopped practicing his aim had been since his shoulders had started to sting whenever he drew the bow.

That was nothing a quick flash of magic couldn't fix, though he knew he would pay for it later: as a general rule Lannon tried to draw only from himself as a source for his Spirit magic instead of the world around him, but when it came to healing small wounds and doing little things such as this restoring of muscle weariness, it all compounded back in on him later. Both drawing and casting the magic itself was already exhausting to begin with, and then when it came to also forcing his body through a quick-fire speed-healing...

The stag shifted again and stepped silently through the trees ahead of him, pulling the lynx's attention back there. It had turned just slightly and looked over its other shoulder, head and eyes away from him. He waited another half-second and then lifted the bow before he could put a second thought to it. And it did feel familiar: the position of his arms, the reflexive straightening of his back and shifting of his shoulders, the quiet creak of the string pulling against the limbs, the susurration of the shaft being drawn back, the way that all the other sounds of the world blocked out so that all he could hear was his own breathing, slow and steady, and the near-silent footsteps of the stag ahead of him as it ambled on.

Don't hold your breath, he was told. Don't close your eye. Don't isolate your target from its surroundings. Keep it there, in the same world which you too inhabit. Keep it, see it, track it...

_ _

His thumb shifted at the fletching of the arrow, briefly lightening the tension in the string. Then Lannon angled the bow again, lifted it up a bit, pulled back - and released.

Kill it.

_ _

He didn't miss, but even so, he hadn't quite hit what he had aimed for, or at least what he had hoped for. Lannon gritted his teeth as the arrow slammed into its target, sending a powerful shock through the beast's body. It tossed its head and let out a sharp, grating bleat, then turned quickly away from him and began its attempted escape. It faltered on the first step, looking as though it may have tripped when the muscle simply did not respond, and then continued on at an unsteady, uneven gait, lilting towards the side opposite where the arrow had pierced. Even from here, even as Lannon took the time to sling the bow over his back and speed off after it, he could still hear its heavy, raspy breathing, a harsh and grating sound against the more pleasant noises of the forest around him. His own heartbeat in his throat, the jingling of one of his piercings in his ear, the quick, light sounds of his footsteps against the heavy panic of the stag's, thumping against the damp earth, faltering and slipping along half-buried logs and stumps.

Technically, theoretically, Lannon should be able to use his magic to manipulate the world around him, to swing out with lashes of vines and constrict the beast's legs, either to force it to fall so he could finish the job or to do so themselves. However, that would take a much more potent grasp of Spirit magic than he was capable of, as well as concentration that was, right now, decidedly split on following the stag and keeping his own footing.

Briefly he considered weaving together a wall of Air to block its path, or a thin pinprick lance of Fire to pierce its neck and sever the nerves to its body, but - as Lannon was going through his options the stag collided with a half-buried rock, stumbled, and then tumbled forward, flattening a bush on its way down and sending up quite a commotion of breaking branches and bones, crackling leaves, and frightened birds and insects. The lynx slowed his pace as he approached, trying to quench the slight twinging in his heart at this sight. When it fell the arrow had broken off inside the wound, itself tearing open a bit. Lannon's nose curled with the soft touch of blood wafting up into the air.

Lannon waited, watching it. The pool beneath it, red tinted black in the dying light of afternoon, filled and spread beneath it, slicking the leaves and broken branches under its body and seeping into the soil. The wounded stag, its head propped up on almost-full antlers, glanced at him once, struggled in place on legs that would not respond, and then did not look at him again. He reached for the short knife stuck into the belt around his waist, though hesitated at the last moment.

I can use magic to numb the pain, he thought, still watching the way it struggled, how all of its muscles tried and failed to tense and move. I can draw the source from the stag itself so that it won't exhaust me further, and so that it will slip away instead of having to suffer. I can just... make it a little bit easier.

He closed his eyes for a moment and cleared his head, letting himself feel the presence of the natural threads around him. That was what most formally trained mages referred to as the Weft: the source of all magic, the natural interweaving of all of the different types throughout the world and everything in existence. Hot, thick cables of Fire constantly pouring down from the sun; trails of Water in the dew clinging to leaves as well as threaded through those plants themselves; tightly-knotted clumps of Earth in the ground, swift and thin streamers of Air on the currents of wind... and then beneath and between everything else, quiet and elusive, the bright, beautiful tints of Spirit, pulsing out from every living thing, tying together everything else.

That was what was absent to most users of magic. They saw only the main four, while Lannon could see, could feel, could manipulate all five. That was what set him apart from everyone else. Stray threads of Spirit leaked out with the dying stag's blood, frazzled ends constantly forming and dissipating as the energy of its life emptied out. The lynx took those and grabbed onto them, pulling them together, wrapping them up with his intent and aiming the spell, quickly cobbled together, back towards the source. It would be quick and easy: he could mute the responses of the nerves in its body, could flatten the pain and put it into an unconsciousness from which it would not awake. He could do it.

But then, suddenly, he couldn't. Not for any fault or failure of his own, but rather since he was prevented from it. Right as he held that spell close in preparation to send it out there was an odd noise from the brush nearby, then a growl cresting into a snarl accompanied by the heavy, lumbering step of some huge creature pushing through the trees. Lannon looked to the side just in time to see the beast's muzzle and outstretched arms as it leapt out towards him; then all he could see was the canopy of the trees and the sky beyond them, and then for a second nothing at all when he hit the ground and felt the breath forcibly pushed out of him.

The lynx squirmed in place for a moment, groaning and trying to suck in the humid afternoon air through his gritted teeth, and then with a panic found that he couldn't lift himself up. Within a moment this panic subsided, but when his vision and the feeling in his body returned, so too did that panic: above him, keeping him pinned to the earth with those massive paws on each arm was the beast itself, the abomination of a wolf that had so haunted his curiosity and his awareness these past few days. That single bright yellow eye looked over him...

...

...not as a predator looks over its prey, but rather like a hunter looking upon competition. Its massive, slavering jaws remained parted above me so that I could feel the stinking heat of its breath, with the thick globs of hungry saliva dripping down across my neck and muzzle. Up close like that I could finally get a sense of scale on the thing: it is easily at least seven, perhaps even eight feet tall, though it is still hard to say with how it hunches. It could wrap my entire head in one of its paws and still have room to spare, I think. The strength in that grip keeping me firmly against the ground was like nothing I had ever felt, and I could quickly feel my arms start to go numb again.

_ _

Still, though, it looked at me. It watched me, it observed me, it... delved into me, I suppose. Immediately I tossed out all theories that this is nothing more than some previously unknown wild beast, for there was very clearly some sort of intelligence behind that eye. It looked from one of my eyes to the other, and then along my mouth, and then up to first my naked ear and then the pierced one, tracing over each stud, along the chain, over the cuff. Its snarling had receded during this investigation but then came back in force, lips curling back to make sure I saw each and every one of those teeth, some of them chipped, most still dangerously sharp. I blinked and jerked as another drop of saliva landed across my face.

_ _

The thing was, though, I don't think it knew what it wanted, or what it expected. We remained there for what felt like minutes though it was most likely hardly a second and a half. Its ears were torn and ragged, one of them only halfway there; there was no scar near or around the clouded eye, though it was very obviously useless with only a shadow of the pupil visible through the cataract; its fur was matted in places and thinning in others, varying in color from shadow-black to dusty grey to a softer brown. Natural colors, all to be expected from a forest wolf.

_ _

Naked from head to toe other than its hide, of course, though this did not particularly inform me on anything - other than the fact that I could tell at this distance and angle it was undeniably male. Realizing that, I could tell on its scent, too, subtle yet heavy, especially with it leaning in closer towards my face as it was. The lips stopped curling for a moment, the growl turned into a quieter rumble, and there I noticed the most unusual part of this thing: the scar coursing around its throat, from one side to the other, as though from a knife. Too straight, too thin to be anything other than deliberate, but looking at its claws, there was no way that those were the source.

_ _

Naturally, though, in that moment I felt certain that they would at least be the source of a similar injury on myself, especially once I could feel it sniffing at my face, my muzzle, and my neck. My heart leapt in my chest and I panicked, and in all of the movement I could muster I wove together another quick lantern of Fire and Air, this one just a fast burst, more reflexive than anything. I suppose that not wanting to die at the teeth of some nightmare abomination provided enough intent for the spell to solidify and manifest, since manifest it did: the creature screamed and fled, and I bumbled around for a moment waiting for my vision to return, and seeing how long my wobbly legs could keep me upright.

_ _

In the meantime, the stag I hunted had bled out. I suppose I should be grateful that the beast did not take it with him, as I think that might have been his original reason behind tackling me, but then with the adrenaline emptying out of my body and the exhaustion of the encounter keeping all of my muscles shaky, it took me quite a while to drag it back to the hut, even after the strength left my body and I could no longer use magic to lighten its weight.

_ _

Note to self: first thing tomorrow, I must strip and set the carcass, and see how much of it I can salt or otherwise preserve. Keeping it on the ground in the back of the hut is not an advisable strategy.

_ _

Had the sun not already descended, I would have headed down to the river for another bath. The fur around my muzzle and neck has matted down from that thing's drool, and I can still smell it every time I breathe in. It's a thick, heavy, cloying smell, and not particularly pleasant.

_ _

Still, though. Like a lever had been flipped. Nothing for a week, and then every single day, sometimes more than once. Idea: maybe he's looking for something out of me, just as I am looking for something out of him. Perhaps we'll meet again tomorrow. I regret panicking and scaring him off, but when it comes down to it, he is still the predator and I am still the prey.