“A single experience can change a person beyond recognition. I’ve seen it happen before, but never on so large a scale as in Alti. All of us have experienced so much in so short a time. We are all changed people.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Once more, night rolls in and paints the land with a silvery cast. A chill wind whispers eerily among the stone houses of Libertia, far behind them. Closer at hand, magic hangs, thick as death, over the burial grounds. It is swallowed up by the darkness and the tickling grasses, but that is not enough to make Elorian blind to it. Glowing softly like the horizon at sunrise, the magilace trees rise up around them, their aroma equally dense with power – sap and sweet wood, telltale insects and morning dew now turned to night frost. Their scent competes with that of freshly-turned earth.

“The moon rises,” Faei rumbles from beside her, his golden eyes never leaving the silvered grasses of the burial ground, “and the worlds converge. We stand at the crossroads, waiting.”

Elorian lays her ears back, keeping her shoulder pressed up against the girl. The dragons lie behind them, curled up together with their brothers and sisters on the hard, cold earth; opal and jade and ruby and all the most vibrant colors of the world. Before them, the smoke-beast dances beside its vampire partner, casting fleeting glances in their direction; she can sense its presence as well as its gaze, bright and fluttering as the wings of a hummingbird against her fur. Elorian can even, perhaps, sense its inaudible voice, whispering words that only she can hear. But they are meaningless. Always meaningless.

“For what do we wait?” she asks with the cant of her head, the slow drop of her tail. Faei answers in kind, settling back on his haunches.

“For the land to wake.”

The vampire is speaking, her words ringing out above the murmur of voices at the edge of the burial grounds. The wolf only listens when she begins to sing, a song that is eerily familiar to the wolf.

“Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

darkest night hovering ever near,

bringer of both hate and strife,

ancient cloud of deep injustice –

of pasts so deep and bold,

blackest form of carapace,

thee keeps stories untold.

Thou heart hath sprung a thousand wells,

each darker than the last.

A messenger of evil spells,

A creature of the past.

Hearts of blackest form thee sought

in sadness and disrepair,

to teach thee what learn thee could not,

but found what was despair.

O’ why is this the path thee choose

When life is by thy side;

When light awaits to set thee loose

And turn the darkest tide?

The soul so wounded does live still,

the heart still beats within;

when descends the deathly chill

and love and hope fray thin,

do not allow me wait in vain

for times that will not be.

I at least can feel thy pain

and heal thy heart for thee.

Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

I dub thee Shadow hovering near,

bringer of both hate and strife.

Ancient cloud of deep injustice

of pasts so deep and bold,

please now shed thy carapace,

return to love of old.

Fill my heart with happiness

if not in my life’s sight,

for even in the deepest darkness

there is always light.”

Around them, the mood changes as the vampire comes to the final verse. A hush descends. Movement stops.

And then she begins to speak the names of those who passed. The wolf senses the shift in Silver’s attention, from listening to remembering. Elorian wonders if the girl also feels the shudder of magic in the burial grounds that follows in the wake of every word. When she glances back, however, Silver merely sets a hand on the thick fur of her neck, staring straight ahead.

It is a long time that the names continue. Too long. And when the vampire comes to the names of the beasts, she continues, speaking their human names, if they have them, or the names she has been taught if they had none. It is a gesture of good will.

Then, finally, they honor Etrion srinn, queen of dragons, slain by her own kin. The beasts hiss his name in contempt. Hess. Silver’s fingers tighten in the wolf’s fur, so tense the wolf leans back into her hand, hoping to reassure her. Through all of this, the vampire speaks. Bravery. Evil. Virtue. Every word that passes her lips is one that is meaningless to the wolf. To Elorian, there are only those who must be protected and those who she must protect them from. Life. Death. The inescapable need to preserve one’s pack. These are the creed by which beasts live.

“Come with me, wolf who is not a wolf,” Faei rumbles suddenly, standing slowly and padding towards the edge of the magilace trees. Elorian flares her ears questioningly. “They wait on your words.”

“Who?”

“You can’t hear them?” She lays back her ears as she rises, casting another glance in Silver’s direction. The girl looks surprised, but does not try to stop her. Together, Elorian and Faei step out into the dangerous grasses. Magic flows all around them, strong and warm and unquestionable, lapping at her senses. It leeches slowly from the burial ground, curls from the magilace trees, resonates at the heart of her being with the star-speckled weight of the sky.

And the whispers grow louder. There is a breeze around her, rustling the grasses and stirring the fur along her back. Faei looks back at her only once, as they come to the vampire and her ghostly shadow. The woman dips her head to them, golden eyes bright in the night.

“The dragons will make your words heard,” she says, never asking why they must speak. The wolf flicks her ears, pausing when she turns to Faei once more. Moonlight cascades over his fur, shimmering with his every movement. It paints his eyes a stark, dangerous amber. She recoils when a tiny feather, barely the length of her longest whiskers, floats by her nose.

Under her scrutiny, Faei draws one lip back, catching the light of the moon on his sickle teeth. There is a raw wound in his soul, she realizes; Illian’s loss made his dragon into one of the Zara. Faei escaped that fate, however narrowly.

“You cannot run anymore, Elorian. Speak for them. Ease their suffering.”

There is no need for him to push her. As he said, Elorian senses the words she must speak rising up in her chest. They are in the whispers all around her. Fragments of dreams, fragments of wishes scattered before the night.

“We who do not have all of eternity to live must know that this moment will come,” she rumbles, hearing her words spoken aloud by the dragon kin, “those who are our mates or alphas, blood kin or dear friends, will return to the earth alone. All those who live share this fate. All those who breathe savor what they will one day lose. All those who once lived look back...”

She pauses, feeling the wind stir around her, sharper and colder than before.

“They remember what it was to live, but forget what it meant to be alive. These worlds must never touch. We must not chase after what we have lost. And yet…all things living or dead may meet again. All hearts once intertwined will find eternity within their grasp. The world turns, nothing ending, nothing forgotten.”

When she is done, Faei takes a step forward, the fur prickling along his spine. He barks his next words, sharp and angry. “These are words the living must hear. Existence is not life. Life for the sake of living is not life. Life for the sake of protecting something, or creating something, or preserving something; that is life. To live caught up in this world and to be fulfilled by its wonders; that is life. Those who fell here lived. Let them never forget that. And let us go out and do the same.”

Elorian turns her luminous eyes on the people and beasts at the edge of the burial grounds, raising her tail, proud and confident and filled with the strength of her own magic. She needs no true eternity. The time that she has with Silver…that will be enough.

“Is this why Illian kept you close? Because you speak for the dead?” a voice asks.

The wolf turns her head slightly, seeing the srinn of men, Cevora, coming towards them. The Uritikain is her guide, flickering amidst the grasses as it chooses a safe path amidst the chaotic magic of the burial grounds. The srinn of Alti is not looking at Elorian, however, but at Faei. The other wolf watches the human’s approach warily.

Cevora does not stop until she stands directly before him, eyes bright with sadness. After a moment, she reaches forward, smoothing back the fur between his ears.

“Thank you for watching over him, Faei. Even now.”

Faei lays his ears back, speaking equal parts anguish and anger. There is something else the srinn of men would ask. What it is, the wolf is not sure. Faei seems to know. After a moment, he closes his eyes, pressing into her touch, and then ever so slowly, passing her.

A wolf’s farewell.

This Cevora, too, seems to understand. She does not look back after him, merely pulls her hand to her chest, closing her eyes for a moment as she breathes deeply of the chill night. When she looks past Elorian to the vampire overseeing the burial ceremony, the sadness in her expression is gone.

“I have come at the behest of the srinn of dragons,” Cevora states calmly, “but nonetheless, I must apologize, kainjul, for interrupting. There is a message of grave importance to those still living in Alti that must be delivered tonight.”

“As you see fit, my srinn,” the vampire says, bowing and gesturing for the wolf to follow her away from the center of the grounds. They go together, but the wolf does not hesitate to return to Silver’s side.

Faei is nowhere to be seen.