Ghost Lion Crag And the rain

The particular story that he had brought up was one that had frequently vexed him. Smokestep had imagined that his life had been fairly fortunate for him not to have found himself placed between two evils and forced to pick. He was a master at weighing the odds, but a quick-to-action fellow who liked to leap before he looked. Oftentimes, it was this that ended him in trouble. It did not meant that he didn't think about his odds of success, only that he preferred not to be told whether or not it was likely he would fail. In this, the story of Charybdis and Scylla brought about a new form of irrational fear; if he were faced with such a task – a rock and a hard place – could he have made the correct choice to save himself? It wasn't likely, and he wondered if Wraen had better judgment over things of that nature. She seemed a level-headed woman. He was pleased that she was fond of stories, and she had encouraged him to share this one – though she knew the takeaway without even a second thought.

“Let's see if'n I can tell it like me dad does,” he began with a thoughtful expression. “Long ago there were two great immortal creatures positioned on either side o' the great blue channel. One called Charybdis, and the other called Scylla. These two beauts were the peril o' all sailors that crossed 'em, y'see? The two sides o' the strait was too close to each other. Ye try to avoid Scylla and ye'd pass right over Charybdis. Those who tried to pass Charybdis would sail too close to Scylla an' would die by 'er gnashin' teeth. It's said that only one had passed through their terror, an' by a bleedin' accident, mind ye, but still pass through he did. Name was Odysseus er summin' o' the sort. His story is the real story, I s'pose, but I still can't wrap me head 'round it; how could ye move through if ye knew ye were doomed either way?” Smokestep had lost track of his tale, but he was never a story teller to begin with. There was something in the underlying moral of the story that bothered him in his core.

"I think that this Odysseus guy chose the lesser evil, though in his place I might have considered, if there wasn't another way, where you did not have to meet either of those scary beasts," Wraen mused, but - of course - if the hero of the legend had had the option to fly over the sea or have that third very safe road, then people, who would listen to this story world-wide would simply dismiss it as boring. 

"It would be interesting to find out, how to tame those beasts - I mean every monster in a story and alive has it's weakness," she thought of Cerberus guarding the hell's gates and Heracle's task of taming the beast without the use of force. "Do you know, what a hydra is?"

Smokestep smiled softly at her remark made about Odysseus having picked the lesser of two evils; the pirate had never known which had been the wisest choice. The yearling had always imagined himself as a fearless creature who would proudly face any potential monster in the seas, but he was still fearful of the unknown. The Witchdoctors had given them enough thought to keep them up for nights about what was hidden in the deepest darkest depths of the water. When she then mentioned the thought of taming the beasts in the tales, he looked to her with wide eyes and a shocked expression. After a moment, he cracked a toothy grin and shook his head. “Ye’ve got spirit, lass. I like it.”
 
They trekked on a little while further and Smokestep found himself lost in the prospect of exposing a weakness in a creature of that magnitude. When she brought up a question on the Hydra, his ears perked and he looked at her with a careful expression. “Three headed beastie ain’t it?” he asked curiously. Though he was not entirely familiar with their story and the details behind it. He’d heard it only once as a small boy.

"More-headed beastie to be exact," Wraen corrected Smokestep's suggestion, though he was not far off from the truth of the myth. She did not remember for sure, how many heads the beast had had, when Hercules had met if for the first time. 

"For every head that was bitten off, a couple of more would grow. Plus, hydra had a poisonous breath and so virulent blood that even it's scent was deadly," this was one of the creatures she definitely did not want to come accross on a sunny/rainy/any day. The hero of the story bight have beaten it, she was not so sure about her own chances. 

"But it had a weakness though - if I am correct, than unless you chopped all of the heads off and did some magic that I have forgotten about, then you would be able to beat it," even with this knowledge - no, thank you! 

Forgive me, the artist of this painting, but Henri IV looks like a simpleton here. And yet he has beaten the hydra...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...a_1600.jpg

LOL he looks pleased as punch

More than three heads! Smokestep’s shock was evident in his expression and he listened intently to the woman as she wove a tale of a creature that seemed to be found with outstanding power. The pirate wondered what it would have been like to harness such ability; to never die unless all heads were severed. He was imagining what it would have been like as a wolf of his stature to possess something like that. The concept was wild, and it drew his mind to several other questions about the abilities that the hydra had been granted.
 
“How many heads did this beast begin with? One? Seven? How’d they get to knowin’ if ye don’t chop ‘em all, the rat will just grow some extra?” he asked her with a cocked brow and a crooked expression. Shaking his head a little bit, he shuddered. “Sounds like a right awful thing, it does,” Smokestep then remarked on the creature she had described. He was certain he would never want to happen upon such a monstrous being, but he had no concept of what his truth would hold. Oftentimes, the worst monsters manifested in an entirely different form.

"There are different theories as to that - but I think that maybe the beast started off with one head and then someone tried to chop it off, and simply more sprouted from the neck," Wraen was not sure, if the myth about Hercules stated directly, what had been the count of ugly muzzles, when he began his noble quest of freeing the world from the beast. 

"Whoever was the first - probably got eaten or ran off, when it was clear that there was no way of him beating the beast without additional knowledge," she could easily imagine her doing just the the thing. "Maybe the moral of the story is to think things thoroughly before jumping to actions," she mused. 

"Oh, but I think the most horrible beast is Medusa, but I also think that she deserves a lot of compassion as well," it was unusual for villains to be pitied, but from the version Wraen had heard, she had deduced that her punishment by the gods had been very unjust.

Smokestep’s ears swiveled so that he could listen to her remark on the many-headed beast. He wondered how these creatures happened upon their abilities; he wanted to know if it was something they were born with, or if they somehow acquired it over years of their life. The thought of such power was appealing to a spirited yearling like himself. If there was a way to obtain it, he would have searched for all his days. There was a romantic yearning at the thought of finding true power – a treasure unlike any other. The pirate kept these thought to himself but did offer a thoughtful expression to Wraen.
 
“It’s easy to jump to action,” he added with a bit of a sheepish smirk. He had always been the type to leap well before he looked. Of course, his present company did not know him well enough to confirm it. He wasn’t afraid to offer that as an insight to his own character for her. “Ye can deal wit the outcome later, eh?” he then searched for her approval, but he wondered if she would agree with the sentiment or side with a practical and rational standing.
 
In the same breath, she managed to surprise him with a comment on Medusa. She believed that the monster deserved some amount of compassion. He cocked his head to the left and looked at her with a slightly gaping mouth. His eyes searched her features for any signs of humor, but her statement seemed earnest. “Wot? I dunno if she’s the worst, now… but ye tell me why ye think she deserves any bit o’ compassion,” he prompted eagerly.

"Well, from what I heard," Wraen began, emphasizing that her version of the tale might not agree with others - unknown to her - that were passed on from one wolf to the other. "Medusa was a very beautiful creature that was first assaulted by one god and then suffered the wrath of the other. She was turned into a hideous monster, though of no fault of her own," but that was the case with many Greek myths. Unlike classical fairy-tales not all villains were punished or met a justified end. 

"They say - of course - that the world is unfair," she said, repeating words of her mother than speaking much of her own experience, "but the myth of Medusa hardly teaches anything useful. They create a horrible monster that gets slayed eventually and they show gods in very unfavorable light."

In most scenarios, the pirate Captain was an eager fellow who enjoyed the sound of his own voice far more than that of his companions. When Wraen spoke, her knowledge of the stories that had been passed down was welcome. Smokestep had never known some of the things she shared, and whether or not he was fond of any story-conjured creature, he was intrigued by the means in which they had come to exist. The green-eyed woman had a tone that suggested she was well versed in the history of myths and legends. Smokestep knew that he would have found a great deal of sadness once she opted to part from him and Sandpiper.
 
“Say, that could be wot life’s all ‘bout, eh?” he muttered softly. For once, his expression took on a somber note and the pale yearling cast his gaze from her and into the wilderness that they trekked. “Yer made to suffer.” This would have likely been something that Skellige would have agreed with, and did not sound as though it should have been uttered by Smokestep. It didn’t seem all that possible that this was the true meaning of life. He never imagined it could be so simple, but it did leave him to wonder how the gods could have been so idolized when they had created atrocities such as Medusa.
 
“I’ll agree wit ye though, she didn’t seem much like she deserved wot she got,” he then added to his companion with a soft shrug.

"That is a bit too grim purpose to live then," Wraen replied, associating "suffering" with physical pain right away. Had she thought a little more on the subject, she could have added that all the dark spots in life made you appreciate the good things more. 

By now they had walked for a long time and the change in the winds and the sound of waves told that they weren't far off from their destination. It was a relief to know that, once she reached the shores, she would be able to find her way back home with ease. 

"We are almost there," she told this to Smokestep, though he had probably noticed this even before her.

Smokestep couldn’t have agreed more with her; he had known suffering just as well as the next, but he was far more a fan of lavish living than anything in the negative realm. The pallid boy was far too young to understand that hardships were necessary for growth; he had only ever known the life as the Leviathan’s eldest son. Smokestep did not want things to change, though; he was pleased with the luxury he’d faced. The young Cairn would not have known how he would have fared if he had ever been presented with a situation that was not favorable to him or his cause. His pride had always been a fierce combatant against any turmoil that faced him.
 
The sound of the waves had started to grow stronger for the traveling wolves. Smokestep had grown increasingly more chipper, the closer that they got. He turned to her with sparkling mismatched eyes and motioned with a swing of his muzzle. “Race ye to the shore, lass,” he barked softly. Without her agreeing, he darted off toward the sound of crashing waves with his tail flagging behind him.

I think that this is a nice place to fade out. These two have to meet again to spin some yarns. :)

Though less competetive than her two siblings, Wraen would never turn down a game of "who gets somewhere first". She did not look much like a sprinter and yet, when she wanted, she could move surprisingly fast. Smokestep had a head-start and advantage with his longer limbs and yet, when she started her own run, she was rather confident that, if she could not beat him, then she could reach the shores running in line with him. 

Whether little bird beat the weather-worn pirate is left up to the readers to guess.