Rowan jerked awake a few hours before dawn. At first he thought it had been Herman that woke him, noisy rooster that he was, but when he looked around he saw no sunlight peeking through his shuttered windows. He felt a headache working its way to greatness, and for some reason his ears were ringing. Puzzled, he sat up tossed back his blankets, all three of them, then winced as the ringing continued. He rose out of bed and pulled a hand through his hair, already feeling grumpy at the way he’d woken up. A quick check through the windows showed dark skies and just the slightest hint of redness on the sky past the roofs of Harwall.

Groaning, Rowan went back to his bed and flopped down on his belly. He tugged the blankets back over him, wiggled around until he felt sufficiently nestled beneath the soft sheets, and closed his eyes, fully intent to sleep another few hours or until Herman felt it was time to inform the entire town he had vocal cords again.

The already warm bed made the pleasant numbness of sleep return in no time, but before he could surrender himself to the world of dreams the ringing in his ears started up again. He heard a faint squeak of noise prickle his eardrums and for just a moment he feared that a neighbour had gotten themselves a dog whistle. The damn things always made his ears ring without actually making a noise he could hear without wearing fur.

He lay there pondering the possibilities of moving if that was the case until the ringing started fading again. When it did, his headache was already raging war against his brain and the clutches of sleep had long since retreated. Cursing man’s need to constantly invent new ways to pester their animal companions, Rowan sat back up and decided to start his day.

He got dressed, then lit a few candles to fight off the gloom of early morning on his way to the kitchen area. Caring little for his decisions the other day to save the bear meat for a special occasion, the grumpy artist cut up a generous slab of the salted meat bit into it without so much as considering using a fork. Sometimes he liked to be savage like that. Not because he was a werewolf, but because the child in him delighted at the act of rebelling at any kind of table manners his parents had taught him where no one could find out. Something about wolfing down food without a care in the world for how it looks was just so very pleasing. Ah, the wonders of adulthood and the freedom to be a secret pig.

Feeling slightly better after his not so graceful meal, Rowan put the meat back where he took it and cleaned his hands off in the small bucket of water he kept for just such uses. He used a cup to scoop up water from the barrel next to it and washed down the salty goodness of his meal with a few deep gulps. Morning saved.

His home lay quite and dark around him, despite the few candles he had going. Rowan grabbed one that hadn’t burned very far and moved over to light his fireplace. Twigs and smaller bits of firewood caught on quick enough, and not soon after he sat watching the fire spread onto the few logs that had survived the last use of the fireplace. Still feeling sluggish, Rowan just sat there watching the flames grow for a bit. It was way too early to rush around doing anything productive yet he felt.

The crackling flames stared back at him as he sat there, bright orange and hot. The brittle twigs slowly crumbling to the heat made part of him want to touch them. He watched them turn from spotty red to bright, almost white, orange. Slowly he raised a hand towards the flames, the sane part of his mind nagging at him not to, but the primal, more insistent part urged him to see what happened. The heat grew so strong that his fingers felt numb as he reached out for the twig, but only for a second or two. A stinging pain quickly replaced the numbness and as he felt his fingers crush the brittle twig as he tried to pick it up the pain ate away at his skin. Unasked for determination made him grit his teeth as he kept his fingers on the burning twig for as long as possible. He drew his hand back with a hiss when the sensible part of his brain screamed out.

Seared red skin and bubbling blood seeping out where the skin had broken along the shape of the twig glared up at him as he regarded his hand. He felt sort of silly, but not as much as he should. The hammering of his heart and the adrenaline billowing up along with the blooming pain had his head swimming in a way his feral side loved. With distant eyes he watched the skin on his fingers twist and crumble like the twig had to the flames, but then it flattened back across his exposed flesh and the blood pushed forth in small droplets as it was squeezed out and left there by the skin regrowing to take up its place. The redness retracted and faded as the lines of his fingers swirled and mended, a slight tingle gathering at the base of his nails making him want to stretch them. He did, and the nails broke forth and sharpened like on a cat. The fascination broke at once. Rowan swore and relaxed his hand, mind getting back on track as he focused on pushing back the change that had o so slowly wormed its way to just beneath his skin. His nails retracted and grew dull again and somewhere at the back of his mind he felt irritation rise up, not quite his own.

“Sneaky bastard. Right, enough loafing around.”

He brushed his hand off against his thigh as if it was covered in something filthy, then paused and swore again as he looked down at dark ash stains. The irritation grew and the tingling returned to his finger tips.

“Stained pants. Guess we’re painting today then.”

Figuring that since he’d already started, he might as well risk a few more stains to that pair of pants and get some painting done. The voice at the back of his head rose thoughts of red and brown, so Rowan went on the hunt for blues and green. He found the elusive buckets of paint strewn all over the place, the blue under a old coat, and the green stowed in at the back of his pantry for some reason. He eyed the suspiciously green loaf of bread next to it and wondered for a moment if there was more truth than he’d thought in his talk to Marian about bad bread.

He reached in to grab the bread as well as the paint, then nearly dropped both as a bug the size of his fist hissed from beneath the bread. The nasty little creature clung to the expired food product and brandished a pair of wicked barbed legs at him as he dropped the the bread on the floor. It was a horned beetle of some kind, black with streaks of shimmering green going up its barbed legs. Rust red wings fluttered as it lifted the chitin covers and made ready to flee or fight. It choose to fight, but the bucket of paint won with a loud ‘SMACK’.

Rowan spun in a half circle, nearly dropping the bucket. He caught himself just in time and lowered his improvised weapon to stare at the bug where it lay twitching on the ground. He raised a foot to stomp on it, saw the horns and thought better of it. Instead he raised the bucket again, intending to crush the bug with it, but today was a day of many bad ideas it seemed. Rowan eyed the dying insect quizzically, then put down the bucket and grabbed a knife instead. He knelt down and held the sharp blade over the dying critter, took a deep breath, then cut down with one precise stab. A second of resistance hit the blade, then the head flew off with a ‘pop’. Green goop flew after the severed head as if it was a booger fleeing the hold of a tyrannically narrow nostril.

Rowan carefully gathered up the dead bug and its head, then went over to the least cluttered table, paint forgotten. He placed the bug on the table and cleared the surface a bit more. He found glue and smaller knives meant for delicate work and a pair of tweezers.

The artist stared at the dead bug for a moment, wondering what he was doing, then inspiration pushed back common sense and he started carefully taking the bug apart. He put legs, wings, and several part of black chitin in small piles on the table, only discarding the gooey insides and the parts that got too crushed when he hit it to be of any use. The unusable bits he put on a sheet of birch bark he produced from a box on another table. When done he realized that he didn’t have a lot to work with. He’d lost several legs and one of the wings had crumpled when he’d tried to bend it off the body. The head had survived but looked a bit scratched up.

After staring at the parts for a long time he stood back up. He went and grabbed a candle from a shelf, lit it, then grabbed the potted plant he’d brought in the other day and gave it the water he’d intended to give it yesterday but forgot. Watered plant and candle in hand, the artist went to stuff one of the smaller knives in a pocket, then went to unlock his door and head outside.

The sky was dark as he went outside, and the air held a chill to it. Rowan ignored the chill and put down the pot next to his door, then walked right out onto the middle of the road and placed the candle on the ground. He took a few steps back, then crouched down and waited. The first moth arrived right around the time his eyes adjusted to the darkness. A small grey thing, barely bigger than a thumb nail. Rowan ignored it.

Several similar moths and a few crane flies joined the first not long after, but Rowan kept still and waited. As streaks of red climbed the horizon a suitable target finally arrived. A large moth with white wings and a fuzzy purple mane fluttered into sight and joined the swarm of curious night dwellers. Rowan watched the swarm of bugs intently, eyes glowing yellow as the candle light reflected in them.

Slowly he reached for the knife, careful not to cut himself. He grasped it firmly in his left hand, then stretched out his right and lunged. The large moth let out a muted squeak as his right palm swatted it out of the air. It hit the ground with its back first, and immediately started thrumming its wings in a panicked attempt to get back up. Rowan didn’t give it the time. The small knife went right through it without any notable resistance as he stabbed down. The moth died a few seconds later.

Rowan took a second to make sure the wings weren’t too damaged, then removed his knife and scooped up the dead moth. A sound somewhere down the street made him stop in his tracks. Feeling his feral side stirr, Rowan scanned the dark street for movement. Faintly he could smell something sweet on the wind, but other than that he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The artist scratched his neck and looked at the dead moth in his other hand. It wasn’t like he was doing something wrong, just something weird. Why was he so tense? Rowan shook it off as the wolf acting up again. It probably hoped to pick a fight with some drunk stumbling about at this hour. Feeling a bit silly, Rowan went back inside to put the moth with the dissected beetle, then went back out again to collect the candle.

Once back at the designated bug table he got out some more tools and got to work picking apart the moth. Then came the hard part. He found string and a old bottle cork to use as a base. He carved the cork down to a smaller, more slim shape, then wrapped the string around it here and there to create bases for him to sew things onto. Using glue and sewing threads to carefully attach the severed bug limbs, he slowly added parts onto the cork until its brown spongy surface was no longer visible past the chitin. Where string showed through he added bits of fur from a old pelt riddled with holes from previous projects.

Noticing he had no place to put the moth wings, Rowan decided to make a second little bug creature along with the first. A second cork found itself repurposed into a basic body shape, and soon the flow of working had the artist oblivious to the world around him once more.

When he finally deemed his work done the sun had begun rising enough to shed some light on the two little shapes he had sitting on his table, both vaguely humanoid in shape but in no way human in the way they looked.

The beetle parts had mostly been used to create a small hunch backed knight, complete with a needle for a sword and a piece of chitin covered in dry rose thorns as a shield attached to one of its 2 arms. The remaining legs had been glued together and covered in wooden chips acting as armor pieces to make two sturdy looking legs. Thin messy lines of green paint made the edges and shapes of the beetle knight’s chitin covered back look savagely fashionable, like warpaint.

The moth on the other hand had been shaped into a centaur like little creature with a regal posture and its wings forming a mantle like drape over its lower body. The moth’s dark eyes shone in the candle light, and the purple mane surrounding its neck had been filled out with the soft fuzz at the base of some black chicken feathers. Rowan felt it appropriate to call it a her. The moth’s delicate legs lay folded over her belly, and the four legs made of wiry twigs she stood on gave her a almost stag like appearance. He’d added lines of deep blue down the base of her wings in spidery lines not too unlike veins. Her black eyes looked dispassionate and proud.

Rowan looked over his work with a proud smile. They looked surreal and lifelike thanks to the actual insect parts he’d used and the end product made him feel like he’d improved on his detail work. They were small and delicate, but definitely some of his finer works. The fact that he probably would never be asked to make tiny insect people for a customer didn’t matter much. Artists create and that’s enough to make them happy. Even if coin certainly sweetens the deal.

A sharp knock on his door cut Rowan’s admiration of his own work short. Sparing a glance at the window, Rowan saw only red tinged light seeping through the shutters. It was still way too early for customers to roam about wasn’t it? A second sharp knock informed him that whoever insisted on seeing him right now clearly had other ideas on when it was too early or not.

“Coming,” he called out. A third knock came. Rowan frowned and stood up to go see what the hurry was about.

As he opened the door a fist nearly hit his chest, clearly going for a fourth knock. A thin looking man with nervous eyes blinked at the sudden lack of wood to knock on, then exhaled sharply and stumbled back a step. He wasn’t very tall, nor all the confident looking. The man had a worn dark cloak with the hood pulled up enough to cast shadows from his sharp cheekbones. A leather bag hung at his side. Black eyes darted up to meet Rowan’s then the man cracked a not at all convincing smile and extended a hand.

“Ah, Rowan the artist is it? I was hoping for you to make me a piece.”

Rowan eyed the man, then met the man with a professional, if not honest, smile of his own and shook his hand.

“You’ve come to the right place, Mr…?”

“Oh, where’s my manners. Tomas Kelling, architect. I help with the new wall’s construction, among other things.”

“Nice to meet you. Just call me Rowan. Would you like to come inside?”

Rowan stepped aside and held the door open. Tomas peeked past him but said nothing of the mess inside.

“No last name? And let’s. It’ll take a while to explain my request in detail I figure.”

Tomas inclined his head and headed inside, careful not to stray from the path of clear space lest he lose himself to the living ecosystem Rowan called a organized mess. The artist followed and closed the door behind him, once again denying the house that precious sunlight save for the few rays breaking past the gaps in the shutters.

“Family didn’t have much of a name so I figured I’d earn my own instead,” Rowan shrugged.

“Daring, but I guess that’s not too unusual in a settlement.”

Rowan moved some junk away from the couch and offered it to Tomas, who thanked him and gingerly sat down, careful with his bag. Once he was settled down, Rowan moved to lean against a table, earning himself a wary look from Tomas as the wood groaned dangerously. The artist paid the sound no mind, so Tomas cleared his throat and continued.

“So, I’d like you to turn a dear possession of mine into something a bit more decorative.”

Tomas moved his bag to his lap, then carefully lifted out a large dog skull, pale and grinning. He placed it to face Rowan, and for a moment a shiver ran down the artist’s spine. He shook it off and eyed the skull while scratching his chin.

“Anything in mind?” he asked. Tomas grinned at the question, a tad too excitedly.

“A lamp. This stray nearly got me on a job once, but Katrina watched over me and spared me that fate. I’d like to put a candle in its maw and hang it from a wall to symbolize her guidance reaching even the most desperate caught by the maws of beasts.”

Tomas’ eyes glittered as he explained what kind of patterns he’d like carved into the skull, tracing lines along its jaws and around where he’d like a metal ring set in on top of the head to make it possible to hang it from a hook. Rowan listened closely for awhile, then turned around to find something to write on. The architect kept going the entire time.

“- and don’t be afraid to add a bit of a savage flare to it. Maybe some red down its jaws, jagged edges around its eyes- it had such terrible eyes…”

Rowan nodded while scribbling the requests down, a image already forming in his head of how he’d transform the skull into something beautiful. The charcoal stick he used to write slowly gave up on letters and slowly gave way to ideas and images of grinning skulls with fire licking its chops. Blackened teeth and tar fading to red the lower it ran down the bottom jaw. Maybe horns? Yes, Tomas liked the horns idea. Ram horns or deer horns, which ever Rowan could get his hands on. Seems he’d be paying a visit to his new hunter friends today.

“What about a muzzle, or chains of some kind around the jaws-”

“No!”

Rowan blinked. Tomas flushed and quickly tried to explain.

“No, I mean, that would defeat the symbolic meaning wouldn’t it? If the beast’s jaws is chained it poses no danger. If there’s no danger the goddess’ light loses its necessity. It wouldn’t be her saving someone from a beast if the beast wasn’t a danger no?”

The architect laughed nervously and wrung his hands over the skull in his lap. Rowan shrugged and didn’t pay the objection any more thought than that. Customers could be oddly specific about what they wanted sometimes.

“Right, no chains then. How’s this?”

He showed Tomas the sketch that had slowly taken up the piece of birch bark he used to draw on. The architect nodded approvingly, then frowned.

“Actually, I fear the candle might burn through the roof of its mouth if we put the candle inside. Bone isn’t that strong. What if we skip the candle?”

“Skip it? Wasn’t it supposed to be a lamp?”

“Oh, yes but now I’m way too in love with this design you’ve shown me. I’ll just light it up with some candles hanging next to it instead.”

Ego flattered, Rowan agreed to skip the candle. It was a really nice design they’d agreed on after all. Damn he’s good.

Seeing the pleased smile on the artist’s face, Tomas proposed a last few changes, then the pair settled on a price and the estimated time it would take to complete the decoration. Shortly after the architect stood up and said his goodbyes, the skull now sitting on Rowan’s table instead of on his lap. Outside the sun was all the way up and the rest of the town was following suit. Tomas waved one last time, wished the artist luck, and disappeared into the morning crowd heading for the plaza.

Rowan stood smiling in his doorway, watching the sluggish townspeople move about their business. He felt offensively energetic and happy compared to the dull eyes of people that had only woken up minutes ago and were now trudging up and down the street towards wherever life took them. He was just about to head back inside and close his door when a head of red hair and intense green eyes appeared before him. A second later the sweet scent from earlier hit him like a charging war horse and the world grew blurry and unimportant.

Outside the world continued moving as a artist’s door was pulled shut with a click.