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+--- Thread: Barrow Fields crows lie, strewn their eyes are (/showthread.php?tid=66161)
crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Anselm - July 17, 2025
The moment he woke again, Anselm was running. His mouth dry like cotton, an alien weight wrapped around his throat.
He didn’t recognize where he was, and so he ran, and ran, and ran until the rocks gave way to gravel, which gave way to sand, until eventually he was filled with the vague notion he was heading south and somewhere west of him a sea thundered.
Instinct told him to press on, but the longer he was awake the more questions budded to the surface of his disoriented mind. What had he been doing last, where was he — and, where was @Etienne? Gideon? Ezra?
Sitting against a boulder, Anselm scratched at a bare part of his under arm, troubled. How did that get there? He chewed at the bald skin, then scratched at the thick of his neck — freezing when his hind paw felt the alien sensation of something heavy and resistant around his neck.
The fuck?
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Sam - July 17, 2025
Even the Huldra had a home. Sam had seen her den. Danced with her shadow. Admired the miles and miles of stolen skin that stretched behind her as she walked the underworld in her best cloak, pressing her sharp claws into the carpet of undead underfoot.
When his trip ended, the memory of what had seen rendered him mute.
He spent every waking moment in a state of terror. Even the pirate that sometimes took the wheel was subdued, . Eventually, the only thing that trumped fear was a deep-seated need to tell someone. Tell everyone.
@Ghost had already made her feelings about the Huldra clear. It had taken her family, there was no doubt about it. It had the wilds in its sticky grip, was the reason why @Kirain and @Solenya had been alone for such a long time, why there were so many pups wandering about unparented and alone. Evil lived in the forests here, and it would take a hell of a lot of ears to soothe it back to sleep.
But it was not in the fields. Not yet. Something else hunted here, and frankly, one Big Bad per season was enough.
Sam was admiring one such strange heap when a familiar sound tickled his ears. Fleas?, he thought, trotting fearlessly in that direction – fleas meant wolf skin, and that was the kind he was out to save.
A peek behind the mound revealed a wolf. He looked a little worse for wear, with tattered ears and some strange growth choking his neck.
Before the stranger could snarl or speak or run, Sam jumped out and yelled "FRIEND. I friend. I'm. Shit. Look, I need to warn you, and you can't dismiss..." His eyes drifted to Anselm's ears, paused there, and grew wide. Both ears? What a hero.
"You already know," he whispered, body sagging with what would prove to be short-lived relief. "You're here to help.
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Anselm - July 17, 2025
Before panic about the thing hulking his neck could set in, a young stranger set upon him.
His altogether far too enthusiastic approach earned a hard look from Anselm, who immediately stood to attention with the fur along his spine lifting. The glint in the yearling’s eye called to mind something akimbo; a tree spinning downriver, a hawk’s skeleton sequestered in a bitterly black cave — uneven footing in a dream.
Warn him? Had he seen the enormous birds in the sky? The hope Anselm felt dashed immediately as the subject changed and he mentioned him being here to help. Anselm, helpful?
Vhat?Anselm spat almost immediately, compelled to put distance between them as memory of other erratic wolves came to the surface. Heda. Druid. The nameless black wolf in the woods. Sobered by this prospect, Anselm took two wary steps back.
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Sam - July 17, 2025
Sam's shoulders tensed when the stranger made a snarling noise that more or less qualified as what, and rose to become Mt. Sam's highest point when the could-have-been hero physically recoiled. Hope swooned, missed the fainting couch, and died on the stone floor.
Thinking fast for once, Sam mirrored the retreat and schooled his face into a look of deep embarrassment. He needed to say insane things, but the words could stand on their own — no performance of Every Lunatic necessary.
"I'm so sorry," Sam said quietly. "You're not who I thought. It's just.." He paused to look down the stretch of flat, blissfully tree-less plain. "Are you missing any family? Friends? Maybe.. they disappeared mysteriously?" Maybe there was blood and meat and no skin?
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Anselm - July 24, 2025
In seconds the stranger’s face and body language liquidated; if Anselm was a little kinder, he might genuinely have felt sorry for the change he inspired in Sam.
He wasn’t any more kind than he was conversational, so his posture remained at cutting-edge, his eyes retained their prohibitive sheen. The only thing that altered was the subtle flattening of his flared fur; Sam’s genuine expressions earned some measure of softness there.
The question he posed was so left field Anselm took several seconds to repeat and rephrase it mentally. Then his gaze slid back to Sam, hard and unwilling to betray any personal data that could make him vulnerable. But of course, he immediately thought of his sons, Etienne, Heda, and just about every person he’d lost and made him this way.
Vhy?
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Sam - July 24, 2025
Anselm took no further steps back, but whatever part of him had made the decision to hear Sam out had no political clout in the landscape of his face. His expression remained surly.
"Vhy?"
Sam licked his lips, ears falling slack as he debated how best to relay what he knew. "I think something is taking wolves – voolves. Something old, and bad." Short, simple, and without W – out of respect, Sam thought, proud that he could be so culturally sensitive in a time of such stress.
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Anselm - July 25, 2025
The moment Sam mentioned taking, Anselm’s face fell. It had never occurred to him that the nightmarish shadow that descended upon him had visited others — a chill plunged through his stomach as another thought pulled into port.
What if the same darkness had taken Etienne?
Anselm couldn’t explain any of it: one moment he’d been hunting. A broad, noisy thing approached, its wingbeats so loud it shook the trees below it.
He remembered running, and that was it. When he woke up he was nowhere familiar, his mouth dry, right forelimb peculiarity stripped of fur in a straight line, and throat sore.
He thumbed at the collar absentmindedly, frowning.
It took me.Anselm admitted at length, giving the collar a decidedly firm kick before sitting up straight.
Vhat’s your name?
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Sam - July 26, 2025
He knew something. Sam watched as microexpressions warred on the planes of Anselm's face, pulling his lips, worrying at the stitch thay kept his brows so tightly furrowed.
"It took me," the prickly wolf admitted, and it was all Sam could do not to jump for joy. He let the words hang on the air, nodding soberly as he pretended to consider what to do with the information. He had learned several wolves ago that screaming Huldra! in someone's face inspired the wrong kind of fear.
"Sam," he offered, glancing at the thing around Anselm's neck. Had she marked him for a slow death at a later time? "Have you heard of—" Sam cleared his throat quietly, and in a hoarse whisper said, "—the Huldra?"
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Anselm - July 31, 2025
Lowering his hind paw to the ground, Anselm frowned as he tried to make sense of Sam’s expressions and subsequent question. He couldn’t place the emotions behind Sam’s eyes, and the word he spoke was foreign enough that a blade of irritation stroked at Anselm’s patience. He didn’t like it when there were things he didn’t know — and as a classical archetype of wolven ignoramus (or ignoranus, depending on who is asking) Anselm was immediately dismissive.
He didn’t like that Sam was looking at the thing around his neck, either. It made him defensive; it was something he couldn’t explain, and that which existed without his understanding also existed without his consent.
No.He hadn’t heard of the Huldra, and he wasn’t about to admit to Sam that the question inspired a stab of fear in him. He had no rational explanation for the shadow that had passed over him, the thing that had taken him and stripped fur from his limb and tacked on a strange hide around his neck. And that supremely pissed him off.
Get out of my face, Sam.Anselm suddenly shouldered past, lashing out at poor Sam because he was too ill-equipped to handle his own ignorance. He wasn’t about to get caught a second time, and something about the hovering, almost subservient Sam rankled Anselm in a way he could not explain. (Mostly because Anselm was a self centered prick.)
RE: crows lie, strewn their eyes are - Sam - July 31, 2025
Sam watched Anselm as one might watch kindling in a rainstorm, hoping against hope that his words would spark something other than rage in the marked wolf. But no - before Sam could say anything else, he was roughly shoved to the side.
”Wait —! Stay out of forests and—!” he yelled at Anselm’s departing back, but it was no use. He wasn’t coming back. Sam slumped into the sort of clumsy sit that would trigger any strict father worth their salt, and watched as Anselm and the alien thing clinging to his neck became smaller and smaller. ”And don’t die,” he finished, speaking to no-one.