FSE

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Several days of silence pass. Damien does not seek out the wolf-men, and they leave him to his devices. His mother does not change, and does not believe him that bullies are treating him poorly when he comes home with torn pants, still. Damien ceases speaking to his mother when he serves her breakfast, and she seems content to allow him to remain quiet. The world passes around them while the boy learns math, history, and grammar, as well as some basic life sciences and geography. He used to have friends, but he doesn't play with them anymore, since his mother forbade it. She probably doesn't remember that she forbade it, but she did, and Damien obeys his mother.

He sits in his room, doing math. The graphite in his pencil breaks with a wheezing cough, and Damien scowls to think of it that way. There is no tittering nervousness in the flickering of his lamp. There is no sickness in the glow it casts on his bed sheets. There is no guttural demand in the scratch of the termites in the wall. Those would take him away from his mother. Those would take him away from home.

"Damien?" calls a voice. It's soft, like snowfall... no, it isn't. It's soft, and soprano. It has nothing of a whisper in it, as though the one using it is nervous, but excited enough to still call, and unafraid of being caught. It is not the splash of a latent raindrop after a drizzle, having finally decided to roll off a leaf. Damien goes to his window, lifts the blinds, and looks out into the night, allowing his eyes time to adjust. He doesn't speak, and only searches.

"Here," the same voice calls. It's muffled by the glass. He raises the sill and pokes his head out. He can smell an animal smell on the wind. The wind doesn't serve it to him, though, nor does it simper and sigh as it does. He looks down, and sees a faint, human outline... but not human. His mother is asleep.

"Damien?" that voice quests, quieter now. He meets her eyes. Her black eyes. Her black as coal pupils surrounded by silver irises, surrounded by starlight white, surrounded by pale, moon-white fur. He gasps, flinches, and snarls.

"What do you want?" he demands.

"Come down. I want to talk to you," she asks, the gleam of innocent anticipation obvious in her eyes. She is almost taller than he is, and certainly seems to be, from the size of the ears gracing her waxen head. A smile refuses to reveal itself fully on her lips.

He looks behind her, certain she has not come of her own accord, and certain she is being watched. "You're Tatrix's daughter. You smell like him." It is an accusation.

"I wanted to see you. He told me about you and... he smelled like you. It's a good smell," she offers hopefully. She hesitates, and then beams out an eager smile, the expression no less harmless for the sharp teeth in it. "Come down!" she insists.

He feels strange. He closes the window and steps out into the night, hardly remembering having gone down the stairs. "Who are you?" he asks, as soon as they are within speaking distance. She is thin. Her fur is paler than her father's, and only inherited scattered markings of his brown on her cheekbones. Small, supple breasts are barely hidden by hanging leather, and her loincloth is smaller than her father's. Her arms show wooden, lacquered bracelets, and a knife is strapped to her right leg in an ivory sheath. She has thin muscles, like Siber, though they are much smaller. She waits for him to finish appraising her, even as she stares at him with no embarrassment.

"My name is Tetra."

Tetra. "Your name is 'four'?" It is an honest question.

"My mother miscarried three times. Four is an unlucky number in some cultures and my father disagrees." It is said almost by rote. "Your name is 'demon.'"

"I was born with white hair, and demons aren't evil in every culture. It just means 'spirit.'" It is said by rote, but not one taught to him - one he learned.

"I like it," she says quietly, a scattering of dewdrops falling in morning. They stand there.

"Why are you here?"

"Why are you here?"

"You asked me to be." Her question is eerily similar to Siber's chain of 'why's, and though he flinches at the memory, Damien refuses to be goaded. "Why did you ask me to be?"

"Because you smell good. Most humans don't smell good. Why do you?"

"Because... because Siber held me. And Tatrix did. And you must think they smell good." It makes sense, to him.

"Yeah, but I smelled you and you didn't smell like my dad, but you still smelled good." Again, they stand there. He can't tell if she's teasing him. She might be. Her eyes are hard to read, but they sparkle.

"Siber sent you, didn't he?"

"He just told me you're here."

"Why does he want me?"

"I don't know, and I don't care, and I'm tired of being serious!" She pouts at him, folding her arms. "You're not like a kid at all! Will you come play with me?" She flicks her ears and grins. "Come chase me!" She turns and runs away, her flashy white tail flickering behind her.

"I have homework," he says. That's not true. He's only doing extra because he's bored. He doesn't want to chase her. She's going to lead him to Siber, who is going to make him feel terrible, instead of hugging him. She's going to lead him through the embrace of blackness framing the verdant, singing grasses under an envious but welcoming moon, and all he wants to see is a landscape.

"You're boring!" she shouts, and doesn't slow down. She's done with... him? He stares, bewildered. She's leaving. Siber saved him twice, then left him. Tatrix held him once, the left him. His mother has already left him. He can't remember why he doesn't play with his friends. They're too old to play chase, but when he doesn't know what they're supposed to play now... what?

"Wait!" he cries, and sprints after her, throwing off his shoes, tripping while he tries, recovering, and dashing through the grasping hands of wind that snag his shirt - boring! He puts his shirt under a rock and runs, and runs, and runs, until he can see her again. She's sitting on a boulder by the pool Siber healed him in, and she's smiling.

"Hi!" she yips, and as soon as he's close enough, she slashes her fingers through the water and sends beads of it flying at him. He sees the entire moon, and her entire body, magnified in every single one, before they splatter on his face and chest. She giggles at his expression, which is nothing but confused. She tilts her head at him, the same expression now in her eyes. "You... really don't understand why I did that, do you? What happened to you?"

"I don't know." Again, he flinches at the reminder of his night with Siber.

"You don't play enough," she insists, enunciating and stressing each word.

"My mother..."

"It doesn't matter why," she lilts with a roll of her eyes. "You need to play more!"

He blinks. Of course it matters why! If it didn't, then it would be... all his fault...

"Only you can fix it," she says, drawing herself up primly and adopting a silly, sage mien. "Only you can play more! No one can play more for you. Except me. Maybe." She splashes him with water again.

He stares, the hard set of his eyebrows still keeping him from being able to understand. The water is cold, and feels blissful. No, he does not feel blissful. The water feels blissful. The splash feels blissful. He is silent too long.

"I'm bored," she announces. "I'll come back tomorrow night."

"You have your own friends..." he offers.

"No," she says simply, "I don't. I have Siber and Tatrix. And oh my gawwwwwd, I can't stand them! Both their wives are back at home keeping house while they do this stupid scouting thing for the army and I'm stuck watching them be all romantic and gross."

"They're scouting?" A slight tint of fear is in his voice, like light through stained glass. "Why?" There is no reason to attack Damien's town. Unless... they just want land. It would be an easy target.

"The Black come out of those woods." She points towards them. "The Black want to kill you, and me, and everyone else, and Siber knows how to track them."

Damien knows the Black. He had not known their name, but he knows them. They tried to kill him, days and weeks ago. "They tried to kill me."

"They tried to kill me!" She puts an affronted paw on her chest, eyes wide as saucers. "What did I do get targeted? Seriously! I'm just a little girl!" She waves her paws in the air, and Damien sees a leather pouch of darts on her right biceps. "Whatever. I'll come back tomorrow night, and you play with me, okay?" She points a finger at his chest, and then becomes fixated on his skin. "Siber said he held you underwater for half an hour before you started dying, but you don't have any fur."

Damien looks at her finger, then back up at her. Her eyes are so much brighter than his, and gleam in the moonlight. His are gray, but hers are silver. He had been underwater for a minute or two days, and he refused to believe anything in between. "Half an hour?"

"You really do see the world. You live in it. He tells me I do, but I don't believe him." Everything is just an observation, with her same, gay, shimmering tone. She keeps her finger out, and stands up, beginning to walk forward.

He swallows, but doesn't stop her. "Why?"

She doesn't answer. Instead, she steps slowly forward, transfixed, and puts her finger on his wet skin. He is trying to meet her eyes, but she refuses. "You're soft." She moves forward, letting her entire palm spread on his chest. "And warm."

Over and over, she reminds him of Siber, and always by accident. He shivers, and breathes. "Yeah." He swallows and asks, "Why are you touching me?"

"I wanted to know what you felt like," she answers, her gaze moving easily to his. She drops her paw, and swallows once, then tilts her head again, curiously. "Will you come play tomorrow night?" A small smile is dancing at the corners of her lips. He can't ignore it.

"Yeah."

"Smile!" She splashes him again. "I'm pretty, and we're kids, and you should smile more."

"Why?"

"Buuuuuhhh!" she groans, throwing her head up in the air in exasperation. "I'm coming back tomorrow and I'm fixing you! See you then." She turns and lopes back to the woods, drawing her knife and looking around cautiously once before entering.

Damien watches her go, and spends an hour looking in his mirror before he manages to smile. Maybe he has a friend?

"Well that's it, then," Tatrix snarls, and glares at Siber. "Everyone knows the rest of the story. They meet, they fuck, they marry, they save the world. He's not your son, Siber!"

The blue wolf gulps, and watches stolidly from his fossilized eyes. "Why is this bad? How is this a poor plan?" He cannot understand, and Tatrix stomps in the pool of water at the base of the mountain, surrounded where they are by gently whispering trees.

"The Black will see them! They are a larger target together than apart, and if she sneaks out to see him, I can't watch her! She's my daughter, Siber, and he's not your son! You haven't the right!"

"And because you think I don't have the right to do it, you're damning my plan to save the world? He needs her."

"But she doesn't need him. She's my daughter, and you're playing with her like she's some kind of pawn!"

"All of us are. That's why we're out here. I'm here to do recon. You're here to make sure I don't go insane." He meets Tatrix's eyes. The bigger wolf stops, a little cowed. Siber's voice is not accusing, but Tatrix seems to have heard some hurt in it.

"Siber, you know that's not..."

"Yes it is, and I accept it. More importantly: I used your daughter. I'm not sorry."

"He's not your son, Siber."

"You know he can change the world. You know he can end this."

"He's only, what? Twelve? Thirteen? And he's not your son. Maybe your son could have, but he isn't."

"My son was lupine. Damien is not." The words come out snappish, like twigs, stepped on by careful feet.

"He's not. Your son."

"Stop saying that."

"Your son is dead, Siber."

Silence, for a short time - the slow-motion explosion of gunpowder in a cannon. "Am I not allowed to try to make up for my sins?" The words do not have even close to the euphony of everything else Siber says. They are harsh, and true.

Tatrix is a glacier. "You can't by just using someone else. Find another reason to love him. He is not your son."

Siber's eyes, for a moment electrified by the depth of his desperation, die again, and he slumps down against a tree, amber tears once again forming at the corners of his eyelids. His voice does not shake. "I miss him so much, Tat."

The great wolf sits next to him, pulls him against a tremendous chest, and smiles. "You are doing well for his memory, Siber. Smile."

Siber leans against him for support, and smiles. "I hope I am. I want to help the boy. He's so... so..."

The bigger creature nods. "I know. And I think you can fix him." He squeezes his smaller companion. "I don't like the way you're doing it. I'm still angry with you for using my daughter, and for putting her in danger. What's done is done, though. Make it up to me by swearing you will protect her. You brought her back safely tonight - do it every time."

"I swear it on my life, Tatrix."

"Good."

For long minutes, both of them sit and stare, just enjoying the warmth that comes from the body of a friend. Long minutes turn into long hours, and Siber falls asleep. His breath is always light. The wrong sound will wake him completely, but Tatrix takes him to bed, and they rest.