Broken Antler Fen Cause your whole heart's a village

Hymnal was clearly transfixed. Maia laughed, then slid easily back into it. Well! Starchaser could have just told him, but she was curious. And the voice sounded nice enough, so she answered "You have to come out to find out."

"I can't." The voice sounded so upset when they said this, Starchaser stopped in her tracks. That didn't make any sense! There was nothing stopping them, and they sounded real enough. "Most who pass through don't even see me. I had to hear the rest, but I thought you would pass through like the rest. Or run away, thinking I was a ghost."

"Are you a ghost?" She asked back, but it was clear that she was joking. She believed in things like spirits, but she didn't believe they haunted the way the stories said. They protected the places they cared about from harm, but she meant none and he seemed to know this. "You must be, otherwise you'd be able to show yourself."

"I'm not a ghost. I'm a shadow."

Starchaser laughed at first, but then she noticed the way she couldn't focus on the shape, and that despite being able to see it flicker among the other shadows, there was nothing solid to cast it. "You're serious, aren't you?" She had never heard of such a thing! Can you believe it? A shadow without a wolf!

Maia had considered making the curse a monster, but no monster would suit Eljay. This story rang way better and would have a much better ending.

"It was a curse. My mother stole something from someone a long time ago. I didn't used to be this way, but as I grew up, I started to fade away. I tried to talk to wolves at first, but they never listened. They never sang either." He sounded so sad that her heart practically broke for him. As a bard, she had a hard time imagining ever being ignored like that. How many stories did he have to have that no one had listened to! All because they were scared of something that couldn't even hurt them!

"What's your name?"

"Rowan. Rowan Everlight. Can you finish the song, before you go? I just want to hear how it ends."

And Starchaser did finish the song, but she didn't leave. She stayed and told him stories, and after a while he began to share some of his. Some were beautiful, others were heartbreaking, and many were about the wolves who passed through his forest. They hadn't noticed him but he had seen them and remembered them, their stories and their laughter. At first it was harder to share them, but the longer Starchaser stayed, the more that laughter began to return to him too.

And slowly, she began to notice a change. She didn't say anything, but the more time they spent together, the more his form seemed to return. She didn't want to get his hopes up because the process was so slow, she wasn't even sure it was happening. After a while, though, even he noticed it.

The curse, it seemed, relied on him feeling invisible as well. Starchaser never let that happen while she was around, so eventually, Rowan broke free of it completely. And the two had become so close, and fallen so deeply in love because of it, that they decided to stay in that forest together.

Now, when wolves passed through, they found a welcoming family to stay and share stories with. Sometimes the ones with nowhere else to go even chose to stay there themselves. That's why, even though she did not travel nearly as often, Starchaser never felt bored or alone. She had too much love to ever need anything else.

Maia finished the story with a satisfied wave of her tail, a flourish that signaled it was done. She hadn't actually intended it to be the end of Starchaser's tales, but the fun part about stories was that she could always go back and fill the middle with as many stories as she wanted. Besides - who was to say she and Rowan never traveled? Still, the end felt right. The forest had been Rowan's home, and there was no way Starchaser would leave while he stayed.