Footprints in the Snow (Silvy)

[Varian Snowsong]

Summer 10, 511 AV Sometimes, in those endless, quiet hours between dusk and dawn when the rest of the world was asleep, the Nuit left his quarters and wandered the city, wondering, always wondering about the strange and unwelcome turn that his existence had taken, about the gods and whether any of them would have mercy on him. Sometimes he wondered whether Queen Morwen would be able to help if he stepped into her palace, dropped on his knees in front of her and asked her to save him, but then she was the queen of snow and ice. Her domain was the coldest in all of Mizahar. She didn’t give live. Her touch was likely as cold as his had become. There was only the Temple of Everwinter, a quiet prayer for guidance and meditation to clear his mind and forget for a moment. He didn’t dare to enter the building itself though, to join whatever Vantha were still there after sunset. He was not part of them anymore. He sometimes felt as if there was no place for him there anymore. He was worried that they would notice all the little oddities about his body, all the things that betrayed that he was no longer the same man that had left the city a year ago. He wandered the area outside the temple instead, leaving his footprints in the freshly fallen snow as he did so, involuntarily betraying his presence to anybody who was close by. Even though the cold didn’t affect him as much as it would a mortal man, he had chosen to wrap his body into a thick cloak of fur, in part to hide how thin and how pale he had become. His hands were encased in soft leather gloves, and a scarf was wrapped around the lower part of his face. Even though he didn’t feel pain the same way he used to, frostbite was still a danger, and unlike before he couldn’t recover from it anymore. He would always bear the marks, until his body started decaying, until it had become unrecognizable. Sometimes he could almost feel it, the decay, his body, rotting away while he was still in it, fighting a fight that he would never win. Sometimes he was convinced that he could see it, that his hands, his face were changing every minute, that he was becoming less and less. The thought of it was enough to make him sick. Nuit were immortal, but he felt more like a man that was suffering from a fatal disease that could only be cured by death, his or another man’s, an eternity of death in exchange for his continued existence. There didn’t seem to be a way out, but he walked on and disappeared into the trees behind the temple. There were still his footprints, deep impressions in the snow and a most peculiar scent. A mere human was unlikely to notice it, but a Kelvic with her superior senses would smell something, a mixture of lavender, of perfume and something more unpleasant. And then there was the music, reaching her ears, the sound of a flute, a simple melody, a way to distract himself from those unpleasant thoughts that invaded his mind every now and then.

[Silvy]

"Go to the temple when you need solace. It's peaceful." The snow leopard had told her. Still in her human form, she pulled the hood over her head and began her journey. The young woman absently pushed back a long, silvery lock of hair from her eyes. She walked slowly and paused often, looking back at her peculiar tracks. Even in human form, her tracks stayed in digitigrade style--in an exact straight line! It made her remember her dead foster mother again, which was the very thing she was trying to forget. 'Mother why are your feet marks so different from mine?' "Because at heart you will always be a wolf. Your physical and emotional tracks remain closely within each other because you do not trust anyone enough to reveal yourself." Elyssaryan paused and looked down at little Silvy who seemed almost like any other six year old girl. "Dogs don't make tracks like that, my little cub." Silvy wrinkled her strangely stubby nose with disgust at the comparison, and answered defensively, "Dogs have no mind of their own and no sense of survival!" "They have one noble trait that you lack. Trust. Their tracks are like their hearts. Open." For her, it was a harsh admonition and it was the most important conversation they'd shared. Tears welled in the young Kelvic's eyes, turning the silvery pools to mercury. She blinked rapidly, still not fully comprehending the blurry vision when she was human. The harsh climate was quick to steal the moisture and the tears were whipped away by a brisk wind, leaving her exposed cheeks rosy. As always she contemplated the tracks beneath her--and they didn't belong to her! Everything except the unusual tracks were shoved from her mind, full lupine instinct taking over. Her pupils dilated to enormous ebony discs, till the iris nearly disappeared. Her senses heightened with automatic reflex like breathing. 'Male sized tracks, but unusually light. A slurring, almost dragging step. Tired? Maybe. Sickly? Possible.' Silvy opened her mouth slightly, and inhaled to catch the scent to the fullest. Her exposed canines looked sharp and menacing. 'Lavender. Perfume. Vantha? Death!! Decay! Something she'd never scented before! How can something walk if it is dead? Impossible!' What kind of enigma is this? If her ears could swivel, they would have. A sweet melancholy melody drifted on the near frozen air, and called to her as only music could. The notes were poignant and tugged at her heart, drawing her forward involuntarily. When she remembered to use her eyes again, she spotted a bundled figure playing a well made flute. His thin body leaned against the lee of a huge and ancient tree in a small grove. It offered but scant protection from the ever present wind and cold. The well wrapped young man seemed average until she noticed that the gloves couldn't hide his slim hands. The eyes whirled with emotion! Silvy liked Vantha eyes. She may be color bind but Vantha eyes always told her what she needed to know. Here was the mystery sitting in front of her! He was the source of the scents. Lavender and Death.

[Varian Snowsong]

He eventually leaned against a tree, one of the largest that grew there and closed his eyes. When he closed his eyes, it was easier to pretend that things were still normal, that everything was still as it should be, that this body, his body, was not slowly decaying. He couldn’t see his hands that had become so pale now then. It was easier to concentrate on the music when there were no distractions, easier to forget. His fingers found the tiny holes in the flute almost automatically. He had had the instrument since he had just been a little boy and knew it inside out by now. Had he still been a mortal man, the metal would likely have felt cold against his lips, against his hands, but whatever feelings he had now were only a pale shadow of what a human would feel. He still had lungs, somewhere in this strange thing that his body had been turned into, but it wasn’t necessary for him to breathe anymore, and thus the very act of playing his instrument felt different. It took some time for him to regain the familiarity he had with it before. Note followed note, like strings on a pearl, high and clear. Hs fingers had become a little clumsier since his death, and thus he decided on a slow melody, a somewhat sad song that spoke of pain and loss, with only the vague hope that things would get better. For a moment he lost himself in the music completely, and then there was suddenly a distraction. He felt as if he were being watched, as if somebody were nearby. He stopped playing abruptly, opened his eyes and looked at the woman that stood in front of him. Eyes that were currently a cool shade of blue met silver ones for a moment, and then he put the flute away. „Who are you?“ he asked. His voice was not unpleasant, even though it belonged to a dead man, but it came out slightly muffled due to the fact that he had wrapped a scarf around part of his face. „What do you want?“ Now that she was close to him, she could see that his face, what little was visible, was paler than a Vantha’s should be and dark bags were under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in ages. The smell was stronger now, perfume to mask the smell of a decaying body.

[Silvy]

The questions broke her from her reverie, still so new to the sound of a human voice. She looked at him for a moment, confused and wondering what he meant by the second question. She couldn't speak as a wolf! Then the thin wind stroked the bare skin of her cheek with an icy finger and she remembered herself. In a voice husky from long disuse, she answered, "I am Silvy." ' 'What do you want?' What does he mean? Why would it matter to him what I want? Maybe he's lonely and wants to be friendly? Oh! It must be his peculiar scent of death but life! Perhaps he's sick and needs company as he dies?' The thoughts ran through her mind as swiftly as she herself did across the snowy forest. Silvy noticed that he'd put away the music maker, and she was disappointed. She decided she should try to answer the second question, though she had no idea why he asked it. "I want peace from the aching memories that haunt me waking and sleeping. I want to hear you make more music that carries me with it on the air. I want to run through the forest until I'm breathless, with the wind searing my face! I want a friend so I'll never be lonely and most of all, I yearn to bond with that one special creature that I can open my heart to. That is what I want." Silvy earnestly studied his tired, worn face and the sadness of his mouth seemed to speak though it made no words. His beautiful, melancholy eyes drew her in and held her captive in their depths. They were so sad and looked very dark underneath. She tore her gaze away, knowing it was rude to stare. She couldn't help herself. The young Kelvic empathized with his pain and took a half step to immediately offer him the comfort of animal closeness. Silvy quickly stopped when she remembered she was in her ridiculously awkward human form. The fitful breeze carried his mysterious scent to her, and unconsciously, she opened her mouth a bit to take it in better. She'd never smelled something she couldn't solve! Her bared canines were long and sharp, and her peculiar stubby nose was a little wrinkled up to better inhale his curious fragrance. "Who are you, and what do you want?" asked Silvy, assuming these were the questions she should ask in return.

[Varian Snowsong]

There was something strange about the way she moved and about the look in those silver eyes, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t decide what exactly it was. She seemed completely unlike the Vantha that he knew, completely unlike any human that he had met. For a moment he couldn’t help but wonder if she was like him, less than alive, but no, there was nothing about her that hinted at the fact that she might be a Nuit and share his unfortunate condition. She didn’t seem to be less than alive, but more, so innocent and honest, answering a question that he hadn’t really expected an answer to. There was something about the way she talked that involuntarily touched his dead heart. „Silvy?“ he repeated her name. „Silvy for your silver eyes?“ There were no Vantha with eyes like that. His people’s eyes were filled with all the colors of the rainbow, but he had never seen a Vantha with silver eyes. He felt himself drawn to them. He almost made a step towards her even though he had initially decided to stay away from all living beings, at least for this night. She presented a mystery to him, a mystery that he wanted to solve. „I want peace as well“, he whispered. „I want those memories to stop haunting me. I want the pain to stop. I want to be close to another being. I don’t want to be lonely. I want to live life to the fullest, even though I know that I will never be able to, that my last chance is gone.“ As she made a half step towards him as well, he din’t pull away, but merely tilted his head a little to the side and looked at her curiously, expectantly, waiting. Was he only imagining things or were her teeth a little sharper than they should be? „I am Varian, once of Avanthal, but no more“, he answered. „And I told you what I want. I want the same as you, but there are some wishes that cannot be fullfilled.“ He hesitated, and then he pulled his gaze away for a moment and produced the flute again. He showed it to her. She could see that it was made of metal, silver, a color not unlike that of her eyes. „Would you like to hear more of the music?“ he asked her. „Shall I play something for you?“

[Silvy]

Silvy blinked in surprise at the mention of eye color. She nodded an affirmation and explained, "Yes. My foster mother said my hair and eyes were like silver in sunlight so that is what she named me for. I.. I still miss her very much..." The girl's voice broke and she was unable to continue. The Kelvic watched his body language and saw him lean forward, denoting interest and acceptance of her presence. Her eyes unerringly roved to his expressive face and she was caught unawares by the blatant yearning in his incredible whirling eyes. Oh those Vantha eyes! For a chime, her breath caught, wanting desperately to take away his sorrow and ease his pain. Varian's voice had a musical timbre with a deep and pleasant pitch, despite his mournful whisper. His strong and well made face held her enthralled as he bespoke his desires. The handsome young Vantha/Nuit's body position and wistful tone perfectly conveyed the depth of his intense conversation. When she remembered to breathe again, she felt a little light-headed, and her heart beat an uneven rhythm against her chest. 'I want peace as well,' he'd said!! Varian had matched his words to her feelings! His eyes, his voice, his heart all showed the earnestness of his words and she felt the answering echo within her. Someone else understood the aching maelstrom inside! To once have love and belonging and then it's ripped away so abruptly it was like an amputation of the heart. Could he truly fathom this deadening feeling of yearning for something that will never return? Yet again, she'd found herself staring impolitely and regretfully lifted her eyes from his. The slender silver flute flashed and winked in the sun and she admired its gleaming beauty in the restless sunlight. Silvy sank gracefully to her knees in the snow to sit beside him. The corners of her little pink mouth turned up and she looked up at him with an answering yearning and compassion. In a subconscious wolfish gesture, she tilted her head slightly up and to the side, baring her vulnerable throat to him--the sign of ultimate trust. "I would like to hear more music...Varian." She answered, as if tasting the sound of his name on her lips. "I would like that very much."

[Varian Snowsong]

„Your foster mother ... is she dead?“ he asked. His eyes were nearly black now, black like death, like an endless night, as if he could understand what she was going through better than most people in this world, as if he had experienced a similar kind of pain before. In truth his compassion was not only for her, but also for her foster mother. He understood what it was like to lose one’s life, to die. He was half dead as well, suspended somewhere between two extremes. He understood both her and the one she had lost. „I’m sorry ...“ If he had known that this strange silver haired woman thought him handsome, that she thought his voice pleasant and that she wanted to ease his pain, he would have laughed out loud. She obviously didn’t have any idea what he was, that his body was decaying a little more each day and that there was nothing to stop it – nothing but to move to another corpse and wear a stranger’s face. As it was, he only looked at her expectantly though, curiously, waiting for her reaction, for her next couple of words. As she sat down in the snow beside her, he watched her. There was something strange, almost inhuman about the way she moved her head and bared her throat to him, as if she were some kind of dog rather than a human being. He shook his head. That he was facing a Kelvic rather than an unusual human didn’t occur to him, not yet at least. He only noticed the compassion in her eyes. She seemed to have decided to trust him. „Listen then“, he told her and lifted the flute to his lips. This time his melody wasn’t quite as sad as the one he had played before. He had decided to play something that he had composed in Ravok, before he had died. It began slowly, peacefully, like water, flowing through one of the countless canals in the Syliran city, but then it became a little faster, a little darker. Ravok was not only the most beautiful, romantic city he had ever seen, but also home to one of the most evil beings he knew. All of Ravok was devoted to Rhysol. He wanted to convey that contrast with his melody, wanted to make her feel both the beauty and the darkness, and then after a few minutes he stopped and lowered the flute again. „What do you think?“ he asked her. „Did you like it?“

[Silvy]

His eyes were suddenly dark! She searched his features as she tried to think of words to explain. Silvy looked down at her hands, wishing she could groom her front paws. She'd never mentioned her foster mother to anyone before and it made her uncertain. Should she make sure Varian knew that she was not the attacker? The young Kelvic was about to speak more than she ever had in her short life. "Yes she is dead. The Gods took her from me just a week after my first change. I was only a cub then; still learning about the life and death relationship of predator and prey. I caught my very first rabbit and ran to bring it to her. When I got closer to home, the rain stopped but it was too quiet for a forest evening. I was scared that a predator attacked her but she was alone. No blood or scratches. She had some of your scent--death, but not decay. How could she be dead with no mark upon her?" Silvy shook her head and her eyes blurred with unshed tears that clung to her long lashes. Confused by the words 'I'm sorry,' she asked, "Why do you apologize? The Gods took her life, not you. You are the one with the soothing voice, the beautiful eyes and lovely music that rivals the birds. You did not take her life." The cold was creeping into her toes and hands and she longed for her tail to cover them. Something different about his tone and expression made her wonder. 'Does he long to be something other than human, as I do? He's yearning for someone or something.' The pitch of his voice was so..cautious now. Like he was waiting to hear the right words. She noted with approval that he looked at her throat and knew she'd been clear with him. Silvy brushed the tears from her eyes with a gloved hand, as always wondering why she never cried with water as a wolf. When he brought the flute to his mouth, she sat enraptured at the sweetness of the flowing notes. Although it was still lovely, the music changed somehow. She frowned as she heard the minor chords, powerful and almost sinister. The young Kelvic raised a hand to the back of her neck, smoothing down the sudden rise of hair. Her heart twisted at the churning, building melody that gave rise to emotions she'd experienced since becoming a wolf. Her fingers clutched at her skirts, not sure what to do with the ethereal beauty and darkness of the song. It was the most terrifying and exquisite song she'd ever heard. Very strong emotions were stirred within her and she knew she might change if she didn't calm herself. She rose abruptly with lithe, noiseless grace only to pace in the snow. The girl was unaware that she left strange foot steps that were (humanly) unnatural and symmetrical. She only knew he was waiting for an answer to his question. 'I'm not good with human words!' she thought frantically. She took a deep breath and the words tumbled over each other in a rush of feeling. "It was a song of Kelvics! To wander about for the first part of your life as a happy child with no more concerns than a bubbling brook. Then the next moment you are stronger, faster, and more powerful! The hunger, the need to kill, to take a life for the very first time. Your song was the beauty in killing without malice-- to survive. To feel the scent of the prey; to steal its life to keep your own. And then longing to go back to another time when it was so much simpler and kinder. No one can ever go back to that..." Silvy's voice became ragged with conflicting emotions and her sentence trailed off into silence. She needed to continue, this time choosing her words with care. Her tone flowed soft but passionate; hinting at the animal within that rushed closer to the surface. "Like it? I do not know. It is a song of my survival here in the forest, late nights, starving for untold days. It speaks of how I must kill to survive and I enjoy it, and it's now a natural part of my life. The evil side and good sides of myself, as one." She felt the emotion of the song too much and didn't know how much longer she could stay in human form. Silvy wanted to hold his sad face in her hands to comfort him, but simultaneously she also wanted to run far, run fast from dark memories of things she still didn't fully understand.

[Varian Snowsong]

„Change?“ the Nuit slowly repeated, not quite understanding. She spoke about how she had been nothing more than a cub, about predators and their prey and catching a rabbit, as if she were some kind of animal, but she had the appearance of a human being, and she talked to him! A few moments passed before he realized what exactly it was that he was facing. He had seen others of her kind before, even among the Icewatch, although they had never acted quite like her. The pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together. „Kelvic ...“ he whispered. As he met her gaze again, his eyes flashed yellow with curiosity. „If she died with no mark upon her, I do not know what could have killed her“, he replied. There was a hint of regret in his voice even though she hadn’t asked him if he had any suspicions. She had merely stated a fact. „Was your foster mother old?“ he wanted to know. „Maybe it had simply been her time. Sometimes people just die, and there is no explanation for it ...“ For a moment, as he saw the look in her eyes, he was tempted to reach out and comfort her, but what kind of comfort could a man like him offer her? His touch would be cold. „I was sorry for your loss“, he explained. „Sorry that you had to experience something like that at such a young age. You should have happier memories. It’s true that the gods took her life and not mine, and yet I cannot help but pity her as well because she will never have the chance to see you grow older now, because she will never hold her grandchildren, because she will not be there for you.“ He stopped here, unwilling to reveal his undead nature to her – it would lead to that if he continued. He had come to Avanthal because he wanted to remember the life he had had, the life he could have had, not ponder what he had become. As she interpreted his song as she saw it, he looked at her in surprise, about to say something, but then he just nodded. „That is a good description, a good interpretation, much better than anything I could have come up with. I just played a song of Ravok, of the beauty and the darkness that exist there at the same time, but it is a song of Kelvics just as much as it is a song of that city. It is a song about the longing to go back to a time when everything was simpler, when the world seemed kinder. But you can never go back, can you? You can only go on, hope that you will get used to whatever happened in your life and not go mad with grief.“

[Silvy]

"Yes a Kelvic. A wolf change when I want to be free and be myself, and a person change when I have to be, to speak with words, like right now." She stated with blunt honesty. The young woman looked down as she spoke and became aware of how strange her foot steps looked. She covered her tracks with a dainty boot, trying not to call attention to them. Silvy nodded at his rational explanation of Ellyssaryan's death, her silver hair as a streaming waterfall down her back. "Mother was aging and sometimes short of breath when we went for walks. Maybe she just died of oldness." Not wanting to dwell on it, she turned her face to his. His eyes lightened and jumped! For just a moment, his eyes again held her with their depths of compassion. The girl noticed his slight frown as he censored voicing a thought. 'Varian talks with such regret when he explains the word sorry. What is it he seeks to hide that makes him look so sad? He must know someone who has died too.' she thought, her face mirroring her internal concerns. She stopped her pacing and moved to settle near him again in the pristine blanket of snow. Silvy sat and tucked her gown around her knees, resting her weight on mostly one side; the side facing him. His voice was thick with grief and she wanted to comfort him. She lifted a slim hand to brush the hair back from his face. "It's true that we can retrace our steps, but never truly go back to that moment. There are only two choices to make; move forward or stay still. To move forward means to stay alive, to strive, to have wants and to hope and feel. To stay still will make your mind die quickly and then your body will soon follow." She remembered seeing someone frozen solid, huddled against a tree and even the mere memory frightened her. "As long as we have emotions, we will struggle to live and to dream. I hope for lots of friends and a bondmate someday." The bright reflection of snow turned her silvery eyes so light, that they rivaled the ice along the snowbank. The young Kelvic intended to move her hand down to his jaw, feeling the cold texture of his skin, should he allow it. "Do you have a dream you work to make real? What great achievements do you hope for Varian?"