wayside-parliament

An audio version of this story is available on the Voice of Dog podcast as part of their Ghost of Dog Halloween series.

He should've stayed overnight. He really should have.

Leaving Locust Creek right before dusk hadn't seemed like a bad idea at the time; home wasn't far away, and Dusty didn't mean to presume on his sister's hospitality any longer than he was wanted. But the weather had closed in as soon as he hit the highway, a dense fog that, somehow, no one at the telemancy office had seen coming, that slowed the car to a crawl and softened the street lights into soft yellow smears before and behind.

There was something almost soothing about inching along in this cocoon of fog. He forced himself to focus on his mirrors, lest some other vehicle barrel out of a blind spot and into his back bumper.

And was startled out of his tunnel vision by a much smaller impact. Someone was knocking on his window.

He stopped, flipped the switch for his blinkers, and waited. A few shallow breaths later, another knock. He hadn't imagined it. He reached out and cautiously rolled down the window.

A shaggy lionfolk face appeared in the gap. “Evening, stranger,” it said, voice muffled by the weight of the fog. “Y’happen to be going west?”

“More or less,” Dusty replied. “I can take you as far as Last Wolf Hill.” He didn't even stop to think about it. No one deserved to be out in this weather.

“That'll do for me.”

Dusty pushed the shotgun door open, and the hitchhiker slid into the seat. They were older, unkempt, wearing many-times-patched work clothes and carrying a rucksack that had seen better days. “Thank y'much, stranger,” they said as they settled in.

“Call me Dusty.” The hitchhiker didn't reply, and Dusty clicked the blinkers off and set off again, barely faster than his passenger could have walked.

“So, where y’headed?” Dusty asked after an uncomfortably long silence.

“Salt Grove.” The name sounded familiar. “Got some family there. Kid sister sent me a couple odd telemancies, and I'm a little worried about her.”

“I hope everything's all right. I'm just on my way home from visiting my own sister.”

“Family.” The hitchhiker chuckled. “Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.”

The car crept on. Dusty tried making small talk a couple more times, but his passenger didn't seem keen on conversation.

An eternity later, they finally spoke. “Thanks again for stoppin’ for me. I was startin’ to think nobody would. Last couple wagons didn’t even slow down.”

Dusty didn’t really know what to say to that. “Well, I’m glad to help,” was the best he could come up with.

“Kindness is in short supply these days, ain’t it.”

At last the fog began to lift. The exit sign for Last Wolf Hill hove into view, lit up white like the steady hand of Saint Nanette beckoning him home. As he pulled up to the red light at the top of the off-ramp, a memory prickled at the back of Dusty's mind. Something from a long-ago history class. “Hang on, didn't Salt Grove get blown up or something?”

Silence from the shotgun seat.

He glanced over. The seat was empty.

Other doubts sprang to mind in his passenger’s absence. Half-heard general store gossip. Old folks' tales, or so he'd always thought, about things in the fog.

He glanced up at the receding wall of mist in his rear-view mirror. A glint of chrome caught his eye, a streetlight or two back, from the wreck of a car—no, two cars, by the look of it—that had run off the road.

Kindness is in short supply these days, ain’t it. The thought chilled him to the core.

The red light turned white, and he raced for home.

Author's Note: There is an audio version of this story available on The Voice of Dog as part of their Pride 2024 series.

Triumph Public Lending Library The Year of Our Lady 482

There were so many places Sofia would rather be than the library. Like out at the park on hir bicycle. It was a lovely spring day, perfect for riding across town, or even up the road and along the edge of the Forest, practicing telling the bird songs apart and wondering what lay beyond where the road disappeared into the trees. Sie could even be doing something that didn’t make hir parents worry, like weeding the vegetable garden behind the synagogue. Sie was almost willing to wash dishes at this point if it meant sie wasn't stuck here staring at a book of short stories, unable to come up with a single thing to say tomorrow when hir teacher asked what sie thought about it.

But sie couldn't leave now. Esther would notice, and tell the librarian, and it would make it back to Sofia's parents somehow. Even though Esther and Yakov were off at the corner table, completely focused on that same page Sofia was struggling with, probably having the whole discussion by themselves.

Maybe Miriam would have some sympathy. Sofia looked around for her. Nope, Miriam was curled up in an armchair, her beak deep in some book that didn’t look like homework at all. Of course she was. Her mother was the librarian. She probably had all her questions written out before the rest of them even got there.

Why was Sofia the only one this was difficult for?

It took hir a moment to realize that someone had sat down at hir table. And it wasn't someone sie knew. They were grown up, sie thought. Their skin was so pale, they looked like they'd never been outside in their life—and that wasn't possible, was it, not even Miriam’s parents lived in the library. Their hair was braided all the way down their back, and there was something odd about their ears.

“Hi,” the stranger said, and Sofia realized sie was staring and quickly looked away. “I'm Ariel. What's your name?”

“I'm Sofia,” sie said, suddenly nervous. Why had they chosen hir to talk to?

“It's lovely to meet you, Sofia,” Ariel said. “I was wondering if you could help me with something I'm reading.” They set a book down on the table. It was a comic book, with a cover like the one Miriam was reading. They opened it to a bookmark near the end and pointed at a panel. “I've never seen anyone make that face before. Can you help me figure out what they're feeling?”

Sofia knelt on hir seat to get a closer look. “Hmmm...They look scared and angry, and maybe surprised?” Context clues, sie remembered hir teacher saying. Sie read through the rest of the page, then pointed to a line in another panel. “They've just figured out the bad guy used to be their friend. I think the word for that is betrayed. Like he broke a promise.”

“Hey, you're from the Forest, aren't you?” Esther had come up behind Sofia to watch. Now that sie mentioned it, that could be why the stranger looked strange. Miriam’s gran had told them all once that the trees grew so close together deep in the Forest that you could barely see the sun most of the time, so everyone who lived there and didn’t have fur or feathers had almost ghostly pale skin.

What else was so different about the Forest, that they'd come here with questions about faces?

Ariel didn't seem bothered by Esther’s question. “Yes, I'm from the commune. Do you agree with your friend?”

Esther scanned the whole page in what felt like half the time Sofia had taken. “Yeah, betrayed sounds right.”

“Thank you so much,” Ariel said. They turned the page; the next one had To Be Continued splashed across it. “I suppose I'll have to find the next one to see what happens.”

“I know where they are!” Miriam appeared in a shimmer of red and blue feathers. She looked so excited it hurt.

“Wonderful.” Ariel pushed back their chair and stood up. “Can you show me?”

“This way.” She fluttered off into the shelves, and Ariel followed.

“Wow,” Esther whispered. “A real elf from the Forest. Wonder what they're doing here.”

Sofia shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe Forest books are boring.” Maybe sie'd like reading better too if sie could read comics without having to finish hir homework first.

“Do they even have books in the Forest?” Esther wondered. “Mama says elves just remember everything and don't have to write it down.”

“You could ask, Sofia.” Yakov was watching them from the corner table. “It looked like they like you.”

But sie couldn't ask. It just didn't seem right somehow. And so Sofia watched silently as Ariel emerged from the shelves, a stack of books in hand; brought them to the desk for Miriam’s mother to check out; then paused in the doorway to pack them into a satchel and lift it onto one shoulder.

Ariel left the library, and Sofia and hir friends followed at a curious distance. When Ariel reached the sidewalk, they turned back to wave goodbye, then knelt on the pavement with their fingertips pressed to the ground. In the space of a blink, they changed, and a majestic white wolf rose from that spot, satchel still around its neck, stretched its legs, and set off along the road out of town.

All at once, there was so much Sofia wanted to know—about Ariel, about their home, about the magic that let them transform, about everything. “Wait!” sie called, running down the steps after the wolf. Sie hit the sidewalk, heart pounding, and suddenly felt like sie could run all the way to the Forest to catch up and ask all hir questions. Ariel was out of sight, but sie could smell which way they went, and sie thought sie could follow them faster if sie ran on all fours, maybe—

Someone called hir name. Sie stopped and looked back, and found hirself halfway down the block, and Esther and Yakov running after hir. Standing up, sie realized hir arms were covered in shaggy fur, a dusty brown nothing like Ariel’s glossy white coat. The ground was farther away than it should be, and when Esther reached hir, Sofia found sie was nearly a head taller.

“Sofia, what did you do?” Yakov hung back, eyes wide. Was he scared? Of hir? What had sie done?

“Don't be like that, Yakov.” Esther scrambled right up to Sofia and gave hir a hug. “Sie’s just a werewolf, like my zayde and my big sister.” “You’re okay,” sie whispered. “Don't worry about what he thinks. You've been very brave, and you're okay.”

Sofia began to relax into the hug, and felt hirself almost falling as the adrenaline drained away, falling back onto her feet somehow and feeling more and more herself every moment. Sie closed hir eyes to shake off the dizziness, and when sie opened them, the ground was slightly closer, the scents on the breeze had faded, and Esther was no longer craning hir neck to look hir in the eye.

“Yeah. I'm okay,” sie said, and mostly believed it.

“Told you so. Now let's go talk to Zayde.”

22 years later

The sun moseyed up and out of the kitchen window on its uneasy slide toward noon. Sofia banged on the side of the old dish-washer to try to settle its pulleys back into alignment. Something in there was resisting, and had taken the rest of the inner workings with it. Maybe it was finally time for a new gear train. Well, that was nothing new. She'd been tinkering with the idea of a dish-washing machine for almost two decades, since long before she'd made its predecessor as a courtship gift for Esther, and installed this one as the first labor saving device in their new home. Every device needed upkeep, and any system could be improved on.

And not just machines. In fact, it had been a while since Sofia last surprised her wife with lunch at work. And she could stop by her own workshop afterward and maybe fix someone else's appliances for a change.

She packed up her toolbox and headed out.

Main Street wasn't all that busy today. The last ship in from North Metropolis was at least five days ago, and if anything, Triumph’s shopkeepers were laying low to prepare for the next one. Still, when Sofia left the deli with the usual sandwiches and a box of fresh-baked cinnamon rugelach, she found herself in a small crowd marveling at something approaching down the Forest road.

That something, she found out as she stepped off the curb, was an improbably large wolf with glossy white fur, carrying something she couldn’t quite make out on its back. The one was unusual—Deep Foresters rarely left the Lady’s shadow—and the other utterly unprecedented outside the Solstice market, which was nearly two months gone. What were they doing here with cargo?

The wolf’s ears pricked forward. It looked about cautiously, then focused straight ahead. Sofia couldn’t escape the notion that it was looking at her specifically.

Well, she’d best find out what it wanted. Sofia shifted lunch to under one arm, and made the hand sign Esther’s zayde, may he rest in peace, had taught her long ago, and mouthed the prayer that went with it, praise to the Lady, who sustains the world and lets all things grow. It was no longer a shock that her arms bristled with fur; no longer terrifying, the rush of strength and of scent; and come to think of it, the strange wolf smelled familiar.

The crowd parted around her, muttering uncertainly. Odds were she wasn't the only werewolf there, but she was clearly the only one with the presence of mind to try this. She strode up the street and met the wolf halfway.

The cargo turned out to be a passenger, sprawled unconscious across the wolf’s back and secured there with what looked like braided strands of Forest magic. Sofia knelt to check their pulse—faint, but not gone. “Doctor?” she asked. The wolf nodded, she thought. “All right. Follow me.”

The crowd had retreated to the sidewalks by the time they passed. Sofia didn't know what they'd expected, but it sure wasn't this.

***

Esther was none too happy to have an emergency patient brought in during her lunch break. The food, she appreciated, and promised she'd eat as soon as she was sure the man was stable. The best thing Sofia could do now was give Esther and her apprentice some space, so she retreated to the clinic’s sunny front steps to eat her own sandwich.

The wolf sat waiting on the stairs. Sofia unwrapped her sandwich and offered it half. “Want some corned beef?”

The wolf shifted, and became that elegant elf Sofia remembered from the library all those years ago. “No thanks, I'll eat when I get home. Is he okay?”

“The doctor didn't seem worried.” Sofia let go of her own wolfshape in sympathy—the same prayer, a slightly different gesture—and took a bite of sandwich with teeth no longer grossly overpowered for cold cuts.

“That's probably a good thing. Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” Ariel said (now it absolutely had to be Ariel). “I wasn’t even sure you were the same person at first. Your friends always seemed to be at the library when I went, but you were gone.”

“Yeah, I didn’t go back much after that. Honestly, I don’t think I wanted to be there in the first place. And after that, I guess I just had apprenticeships keeping me busy.” The first had been to Esther’s zayde, may he rest in peace, spending her afternoons learning to befriend the wolf in her soul and keep it from running away with her again, to follow a scent and hunt and keep Esther safe and find her way home without fail, and along the way, enough tricks of rhetoric and memory to carry her through school to her b’mitzvah. And after that, to Ori’s mother the blacksmith, shoeing horses and fixing imported Onumbrican farm equipment until she earned her own workshop across the street from Ori’s and began building her own machines to make the work of living a little easier for the people of Triumph.

“They started you young,” Ariel observed.

“Yeah, you kinda helped with that.”

“How do you mean?”

Sofia looked down at the steps. What would be least wrong to say, now that she’d started? How about the truth? said a memory of Esther’s zayde.

“The day I met you...was the day I shifted for the first time. I wanted to go with you so badly, to see what life was like in the Forest.”

“So they kept you away after that?” Ariel said sharply. Sofia looked up. Their expression hadn’t changed, but she could sense something burning behind their eyes.

“No, almost the opposite. They found me a mentor, a relative of Esther’s, who taught me how to shift on purpose. They did keep a close eye on me for the first few years. But once I knew what I was doing…” She smiled, remembering long summer evenings out past the back fields. “Esther and I used to walk all the way to the treeline sometimes. I got to see a lot more of her while I was studying with her zayde.”

“And it smells like you’ve kept seeing her. I’m so glad that’s worked out so well.”

Sofia wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “Yeah. Me too. Um. I’m almost afraid to ask, but what were you so angry about just now?”

Ariel sighed with the sort of world-weariness Sofia had only ever heard from the elders at synagogue. “Did you ever read those comics from across the sea, and really think about how they talked about werewolves?”

“Uh, not really…”

“Those stories are real over there, mostly. I’ve met folks whose parents disowned them, just for being werewolves.”

Come to think of it, hadn’t Yakov been afraid of her that day?

“In Onumbrica there are places werewolves aren't allowed to live. Subjects we can't study. Whole professions that won't hire us.”

Imagine an entire town, as scared and judgemental as Yakov had been that day. No, an entire continent. “...That sounds terrifying.”

“It was.” Ariel wrung their hands; Sofia almost thought she recognized some of the Shapes between their fingers. “The thing is, it wasn’t awful everywhere. I met some wonderful people there, and so many of them were werewolves working to change the laws and make people less scared of each other.” They glanced up toward the Forest. “Imagine your family and mine doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Being less scared of each other.”

Sofia had never really been all that aware of the comings and goings of Forest folk in Triumph. It occurred to her that maybe that wasn’t because she’d always been too busy to notice.

She’d spent her whole childhood being warned away from the Forest. What had Ariel’s parents taught them about leaving it?

She looked down at the rest of her sandwich, and realized she’d lost her appetite. “Do you think they could?” she asked.

“I think they could. But it’ll take more than just you or me arguing with them. I need to know more about how things are changing in Onumbrica first.”

“So you’re going back.”

“Yeah. And I’m not sure anybody at home has really gotten their head around that yet. Right now, I just need them to understand that I’m gonna come home again.”

“Well.” Sofia couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Ariel stepped down off the porch and knelt on the sidewalk. They started to lean into their transformation Shape...then pulled themself out of it and looked back up at Sofia. “You know, I never really got to thank you,” they said.

“For what?”

“When we first met, I was just starting to learn to read your people’s body language. My cousin had brought me out here in secret, and got me a library card, but they couldn’t help me with faces. I had to ask around, and you were one of a very few people who took me seriously. I wouldn't have survived long in Onumbrica without that knowledge. So, I guess, thanks for helping me get started.”

They relaxed back into their wolfshape, and were gone before Sofia could gather her wits enough to say “you're welcome.”

She sat on the steps a while longer, staring at the road and trying to make sense of things.

She supposed she’d better talk it over with Esther. Over the rest of lunch, if she wasn’t too preoccupied with her new patient.

Author's Note: There is an audio version of this story available on The Voice of Dog as part of their Ghost of Dog 2023 series. Story starts at 1:14.

The evening breeze prickled the back of Bert's neck. There was something at the crossroads.

She saw nothing, no pattern among the lightning bugs darting about the tall grass in the corners, heard no sound of footsteps or engines beneath the chorus of crickets. But there was definitely something in the air.

She'd always had a sort of gift, what Ma called the second scent, maybe what the wizards who sold spells in town called feeling the current. She knew little of wizards: in the UNM correspondence course catalog, the magic classes had all been labeled In Person Only, which everyone knew meant No Werewolves Allowed.

She preferred to call it seeing the things that were really there. And it was easier to do with fur on.

She stopped a few paces from where the roads crossed and closed her eyes, shutting out the world and gathering herself the way Gran had taught her, imagining the very fibers of her being knotting themselves together like the rag rug in Mama’s kitchen. When she opened her eyes, the night was warmer and the breeze full of smells and sounds she’d barely noticed in her other body.

The shape in the breeze was stronger now, in some combination of sight and scent that no one but Gran had ever really understood when she tried to explain. And it was a shape she almost recognized. Another werewolf in the middle of the crossroads, as faint and faded as campfire smoke over the next hill, thumbing in vain for a lift that would never pull over.

She approached cautiously, hands out to show she meant no harm. There was no guarantee they could see her, but it never hurt to be careful.

The stillness stretched, the cricket chorus swelling until it threatened to deafen her.

She realized she was holding her breath at the moment the ghost turned their head and looked her dead in the eye.

She dropped her gaze as quick as she could, focusing instead on their mouth and making no sense out of her attempt to lip-read. They held out a hand–maybe inviting her to hitch with them? She shook her head and pointed down another branch of the road.

They paused, head tilted as if hearing a distant whistle, and fixed their eyes on her hand. Looking down at it, she saw the bracelet of braided fur that had fallen out of her shirt cuff.

“To keep you safe on the road,” Mama had said as she'd tied it around Bert's wrist mere days before. “Your ma's fur and mine, it'll find you your cousins no matter where you go.”

She glanced back up at the ghost, who was now holding out their other arm. On that wrist, they wore a bracelet very like hers. She held her arm beside the ghost's to compare them: theirs had a fancier braid, and a bit more wear and tear, but it was definitely still a fur charm. How long ago had they died, she wondered. How far back did that tradition go?

She looked back up at the ghost's face, and found its mouth half-open in a canine grin. The hand with the bracelet moved again, resting above her upturned palm, not quite a handshake, but close enough for someone who could reach right through you. She glanced back down at the movement, and when she looked up, the ghost was gone.

“Thanks, cousin,” she whispered after them. No telling if something of them lingered on the breeze, or if finding unexpected kin out here was what they’d needed to send them on West.

Regardless, her own soul felt a touch lighter as she stepped back from the middle of the road and considered her options. In the direction she’d pointed, she saw a glimmer of campfire just out of reach. That was good enough.

Even if the people there were no friend to werewolves. Bert closed her eyes again and imagined picking up Mama’s old rag rug and snapping it into the wind. The breeze became sharper, the scent of ditch-flowers duller, and there was nothing left to do but head up the road and see who’d built that fire.

If she was lucky, it was someone who needed to hear a story like this tonight.

I have sung to you of Kirnika, the greatest warrior of her age, bride of Mistelin, the Lord of Dusk; of the strength and courage of their children, whose children's children became in their time the first werewolves; and how her sudden passing into Death's domain left Him so bereft as to tear a hole in the weave of the world, to create a place neither living nor dead, from which He could in His own time say farewell. This land of rest became His place, and it brought Him peace.

Amruoc, Lord of the Hunt, saw what Mistelin had done, and it gave him pause. He sat in thought for three days without moving, turning these events over in his mind, and for those days no arrow would fly true, no track could be found, no snare would grasp.

At dusk on the third day, two hunters sat hungry beside their fire. And they became aware that they could smell meat cooking, and they found a third man sitting across the fire from them, roasting a fat rabbit and staring without seeing into the flames. And just as it occurred to them who he was, one about to cry out, and the other to rise and kneel before their god, Amruoc spoke: “What is it that you hunt for?”

“We came looking for deer,” said the second hunter.

“Not what you hunt,” said Amruoc. “Why do you hunt at all?”

“For food, my lord,” the first hunter said. “We mortals must eat, after all.”

“Is that all?” Amruoc asked, meeting their eyes for the first time.

“What other reason could there be?” they said.

The firelight shifted, and he was gone.

The rabbit remained.

It tasted divine.

***

Throughout the land, hunters began to tell tales of a man, cloaked and hooded, who appeared at their camp without a sound, gave them meat, and asked them why they hunted. The bowmen of the north forests, the spear-throwers of the southern plains, the fisherfolk on the sweetwater lakes, and the seal catchers on the Seven Rivers all met with him. The Children of Dusk spoke of him, and the orcs, and the lionfolk. Every hunting animal, from bobcat to shrike, said they had seen him. But not one could say he had been satisfied with their answer.

One night at dusk, a young ferret emerged from his burrow to find the Lord of the Hunt had made camp outside his door. He bowed, and tried to hide his fear, and said: “Greetings, my lord. If you've come to take my pelt, at least let me bid farewell to my family first.”

“Am I Mistelin, that you think my heart so movable?” Amruoc stared into his fire. “I have no need of your pelt, nor of anything else from you.”

The ferret felt bolder, enough to feel, instead of fear, the curiosity that now filled every creature that breathed, and to ask: “Lord of the Wilderness, how goes your search?”

“Long and weary,” said Amruoc, “and I know not how much longer and wearier. Were I anyone but myself, I would say that I hunt something which cannot be found, and I would do well to give it up and go home.”

“But you yourself will not?”

“I cannot. I am the hunt, not the hunter. I do not give up. And if I give up the hunt, what home have I to return to?” He looked down at the ferret for the first time. “Do you hunt?”

“Only voles and prairie chickens, my lord.”

“And why is it that you hunt?” Amruoc asked, wearier than ever, as if praying to the rising moon that this would be the last time.

“You have said it better than I ever could,” said the ferret. “More than hunger, more than thrill, more than knowing that, if only I seek it the sun will rise tomorrow: I hunt because I have not given up.”

Amruoc felt a great weight lifted off his soul, and he smiled. “At last,” he said, “my hunt has not been in vain.” Here was a hunter who truly understood the hunt, as Amruoc had once thought only he could. “Go and say your farewells, my friend. From this day forth, you hunt with me.”

And so began the Longest Hunt, which continues to this day. And any hunter, if they be wise enough, and determined, and seek to become one with the hunt, may one day find themselves before Amruoc. And if they answer His questions well, they will hunt alongside him forever, in death as in life, and what they seek together, Amruoc alone knows.

History

The winter solstice is the first day of the year in both Silvanian calendars and Onumbrica's Metropolitan Almanac. In the old days, the holiday commemorated the return of Coren, god of the sun at noon, after (almost, in some traditions) being seduced by Coreas, god of winter, into abandoning his responsibilities. Classical solstice parties typically involved feasting and dancing all night and ended with watching the sun rise, at which time Coren was said to have confronted his father Barolin, the tyrannical god of dawn, who had tried to steal the sun for himself, and set it back on its course.

It's also said that Coreas sulked for weeks after Coren rejected him, which is why Snow is the first month of all three calendars, in spite of Silvania's climate being substantially warmer than the parts of Onumbrica at the same latitude, and the rarity of actual snow anywhere since the Cyclone.

Onumbrican customs

Since the Cyclone, Onumbrican and Silvanian traditions have diverged. Under the judgmental eye of the Senate, Onumbrican solstice secularized rapidly, and has become a festival of gift-giving and community togetherness. Gifts are traditionally placed under a tree in the town square (often a courtyard in urban apartment buildings, and wealthy families may have their own tree), and going outside in the cold to find your gift symbolizes the fresh possibilities of the new year.

Silvanian customs

In coastal Silvania, the solstice holiday commemorates the return of the Lady, who fell silent in the days after the Cyclone. The holiday is preceded by three days of vigils, and ends with an elaborate brunch including boiled ring bread (symbolizing the continuity of the year) and smoked meat, most often salmon. In the town of Triumph, the holiday season continues for another seven days, culminating in Dedication Day, which celebrates the first religious services held in Triumph's rebuilt synagogue post-Cyclone. Some of the towns in closer contact with Onumbrica have adopted Onumbrican gift-giving traditions, especially Alliance, where tree decorating has become its own art form.

[Note: No one actually knows what time of year the Cyclone happened. The New Year is as good a time to celebrate as any.]

The Silvanian Outer Forest calendar observes the solstice with a single all-night prayer vigil followed by a feast celebrating the return of the All-Mother. Neither coastal folk nor Outer Foresters have records of whether the people of the Inner Forest observe the day at all.

Note on Hidalguan customs

The nomadic scholarly groups of tropical and southern Hidalgo prioritize celebrating the equinoxes over the solstices, often with a claim that their traditional discourse prefers equilibrium to extremity, though some acknowledge that the custom began in the tropics, where solstices are harder to determine. However, in southern regions, the summer solstice is considered an excellent time to teach children the basics of trigonometry by measuring shadows, and has therefore become a minor holiday of its own. (The Hidalguan winter solstice has likewise become a holiday for teaching astronomy.)

The Director of the Senate Archive knew she was dreaming, because she'd been here before.

Her first day at the Archive, fresh from an internship at the Traymetropolis university library, staring up at the statue of St. Fay that the previous director had inexplicably installed dominating the entryway.

Except the first time she'd seen that statue, it had been early morning, and now it was the dead of night, icy moonlight ribboning down from the windows in the rotunda, across the statue's marble face and down to where she stood, feeling as tiny and defenseless as a hatchling.

The statue hadn't spoken to her that day either.

When she woke, she couldn't remember what the statue had said, but she knew it had been important. That feeling stayed with her through breakfast and all the way to work, where the real statue gazed out at the grand front doors and added nothing to the conversation.

She sat down at her desk in the back office and reached for her inbox, and in that moment everything changed.

The first piece of newsprint she'd drawn from the stack was at least a week old, driven to the back burner in the last several days' flurry of damage control, as the archivists raced to figure out what a vote of confidence overturning a Traditionalist majority meant for them, and for their funding. It was the arts and culture section of the Metropolis Gazette, with nearly all the space above the fold on the front page taken up by a wirephoto portrait of half a dozen people in some public park—

and among them, off to one side, was a woman who looked exactly like that statue of St. Fay.

REVIVAL REALIZED, proclaimed the headline, over a byline from a prairie town where nothing notable had happened in—she couldn't be sure, but at least a couple of centuries—

What had her predecessor known, when they commissioned that statue?

She pulled a memo pad in from the corner of her desk and began to write.

***

The Deputy Director, arriving just a hair late to the office, found an utterly baffling memo in his inbox.

Dave—Can you take the Committee meeting this afternoon? Sorry about the short notice; I've got work to do in Lest We Forget.

What in Sidney's was so urgent as to send the Director away, without prior planning, to a place he'd never heard of, on a day the Senate expected her?

Not that he had the luxury of sitting around and thinking about it now. There were budget reports to reread.

***

The Director paused on the platform to look back at the Wildcat Express. She remembered wondering, as a junior librarian, why both it and the City of Metropolis stopped in Lest We Forget, the continent’s busiest rail routes crossing paths in this nothing of a town. Historical reasons, was all the books had said.

“Madam Director?” She turned back. A young Shade woman with a clipboard stood before her. She held out a hand, palm up. “Lyna Richards, Sturmkraw research group.”

The Director held out her own hand to where their palms would have touched, just long enough for a professional handshake. “I don't think I told anyone out here I was coming. Did the Archive send you?”

Lyna shook her head. “Better'n that. There's someone who wants to see you down in Memorial Park.” The look on her translucent face gave nothing away.

Bending down to pick up her suitcase, the Director finally got a good look at Lyna's clipboard. Beneath a newspaper clipping advertising some kind of “sunrise cure” patent medicine was that same wirephoto from the Gazette.

“Is this about St. Fay?”

Lyna set off through the station, and the Director scrambled to follow. “Your folks've been librarians just about forever, right?”

“As far back as we have records. There's an old family joke that my eight-greats-grandmother was the high priestess of something or other, but that's it.”

“That'll be less of a joke in a minute. Firial's been lookin' for the descendants of her old priesthood, an' it sounds like you're the only one who's answered. Makes sense you're in the high priests' direct line.”

Dathius' pinfeathers. She had so many questions. “Firial?” was the first to make it out of her beak.

“She don't like bein' called Saint Fay. That's a name was come up with after the Cyclone to hide the history from the Metro. Credit to your ancestors, it worked well enough that you work for the Senate now. But she only answers to the name she gave herself.”

They were out of the station now, and crossing a quiet street into what could only be Memorial Park. Little sparks and swirls of magic faded into the Director's vision, all headed for the sixteen standing stones a little way away, in various states of disrepair, and the striped pavilion that cozied up to them. It felt like something in the current was converging here.

“So does she want me to be a priestess?”

“Nah, it sounds like she likes you where you are. Director of the biggest library on the continent? Keepin' it runnin' every year the Senate tries to cut taxes on itself? You're doin' Her work already. Besides, she's already got me trained up to speak for her, an' I get the sense she don't like changin' her mind much.”

A teenage orc sat against one of the standing stones in the outer ring, current eddying around him and a werewolf in work clothes watching over him. The Director glanced at Lyna, who shook her head.

Not my project. You can ask him what he's doin' if you're still here when he wakes up.”

They stopped before a stone in the inner circle, straight and smooth as the day it was carved, with the sign of St. Fay inlaid near the top. Lyna knelt before it, hands resting palm up on her thighs, and craned her neck to address the faintly glowing glyph. “Firial! An heir to the priesthood has answered your call.”

In the silence, the Director felt the pressure of the current building inside her head. She considered kneeling, but it didn't quite feel right for the moment.

Barely a breath after that decision, she became aware of a figure who hasn't been there before, who seemed to fade into view as she watched. A human woman, but nearly as tall as the obelisk beside her, and identical to the statue in the Archive.

“Welcome home, Director,” the goddess said with the gentle coolth of the waning moon. “I'm glad you were able to join us. We have much to discuss.”

***

“Cent for your thoughts?”

Startled, the Director looked up from her plate. They'd retreated to a boardinghouse on the far side of the park, and been given hot sandwiches that Lyna swore were worth coming to town for all on their own. Whether or not that was the case, the Director found herself without appetite.

She shrugged. “It's just a lot to take in.”

“The gods never do anything halfway, do they,” Lyna said. “What's eatin’ you the worst?”

“I think…” the Director said, and thought for a while. “When I joined the Order, I got the sense we were safeguarding history for other people. Protecting the truth until we didn't have to anymore and could teach everyone how the world really worked again. And I was good at it.”

“An' it sounds like you can't think of it like that anymore.”

“No, I can't. Because it's my history now. My eight-greats grandmother was the first head of the Order. She watched her parent die of a broken heart after the Cyclone, because Firial was gone. Trying to stay objective about all this, in the face of that, feels like an insult to her.”

Lyna considered. “Maybe try bein’ subjective, then.”

“What?”

“As I understand it, the gods from the Revival are the ones that really wanted to come back. Every single one of ‘em had somethin' they loved about the world, so much that it held them close and made us able to reach ‘em. Even Firial. You'd think to listen to her she'd be the most distant and impartial of anyone. But every single one of us is here because she decided, as soon as she was back in the world, that she needed her child back too, and she needed mortal help to find him. I say leave the objectivity to folks who're farther away from the history. Study this because you've got ties to it, not in spite of 'em.”

The Director felt that same shrunken and stranded feeling from her dreams. “How?” she asked, mostly at her sandwich.

“Stay a couple days, talk to the librarians here. Maybe they've got somethin’ in their Cyclone archive that'll help you get your bearings. And then you can decide what to do when you feel like you know enough.”

“Spoken like a member of the Order.” The Director looked up. “…Are you?”

“Nah, Firial’s still workin’ out what to do about that. But it could happen.”

”...and he asks me if I can make change for a Senator.”

“Yeah, pull the other one.”

“Exactly. Nobody walks around with a hundred bucks in gold, and I sure as Sid don't keep that much behind the bar. So I ask to see it. An' he reaches fer his breast pocket—an' then he stops, an' says he'd really rather not.”

“Amateur.”

“You've played dice with lionfolk before, yeah?”

“Not our regulars, but yeah, in other places.”

“Ever meet one with a twitchy ear?”

“'Course I have, boss, an' every time it's a tell.”

“This guy had it. So now I know for certain he's tryin'a' grift me outta almost a hundred bucks in my own establishment. And he's bein' so clumsy about it a kid'd see right through 'im an' call the Sheriff.”

“No shit.”

“So I grit my beak, an' I count to ten, an' once I'm feelin' a mite more ladylike I say to him, look, if yer gonna pass a fake Senator, y'gotta have some confidence in it. Let the mark take the coin, let 'em think it's real fer long enough to leave the shop, if not to skip town altogether. Yours is scrap steel on the inside, ain't it? Gotta use somethin' soft, so they can bite it and buy it.”

“Hah! An' what'd he say to that?”

“Well, he stared at me like a fresh-caught fish for a while, went a little pale under his fur, an' then he said, an' I almost couldn't hear him at first, he said, please don't call the Sheriffs on me, I can't go back.

“Now, I was feelin' generous this afternoon, an' I told him to thank Saint Jane an' his lucky star that I was, 'cause I had better things t'do than throw him on the tender mercies of the law. In fact, if he needed somewhere to stay for a while, I supposed I could find him a way to earn room 'n' board here.”

“Generous my ass. You've been lookin' fer someone new to work the back room ever since ol' Garrett went missin' on the way to Metropolis.”

“An' why shouldn't I give that job t'someone who obviously needs it, and was nice enough to fall straight into our lap, and can't afford to rat out our business?”

“Yer not wrong, boss, only...”

“Yeah?”

“He's an outta-towner, we dunno who's after him, who could end up findin' us 'cause of him.”

“An' that's where you come in. He's on your shift; find out everythin' you can tonight while yer teachin' him t'pack spellbooks the right way. An' see if his penmanship's as good as Garrett's. Maybe we'll make a real criminal outta him.”

“Arright, you're the boss.”

Once, when the river of Time had just begun to flow through the world, there lived a woman in the western forests who could outrun, outshoot, and outwrestle everyone she knew, and everyone they knew as well. Her parents despaired of her ever finding a spouse and giving them grandchildren one way or another, and so, tired of their nagging, she vowed before the community that she would marry the first person who could best her.

Many tried, men and women and otherwise, human and lion and orc; but she was stronger, faster, and cleverer than all of them. Until, one evening at dusk, just as nights began to outrun days in their slow and steady race to the solstice, a dark man in dark clothing found her in a clearing. He challenged her: after three sunsets, if he could cause her to care about him, she would hold to her vow and marry him. She laughed, thinking she could resist any temptation, and accepted his challenge.

On the first night, they met again in the clearing, and the dark man promised her riches beyond her imagination, in jade and leather and the gold that ran in the streams. She heard his proposal, and refused it, for she felt that her family already had all they needed to prosper.

On the second night, he brought with him all the birds of the world to serenade them, and they danced until the stars faded and the music waned, as songbird after exhausted songbird fell silent, and a family of mockingbirds scrambled to pick up the melodies and weave them into something approaching the whole. Again, she refused him; and from that day on, the mockingbird has learned every song it can, lest it be called upon again to sing for the flock.

On the third night, she arrived in the clearing to find it empty. She waited for him, and she waited, and just as the last sliver of sun sank below the treetops and she began to wonder what had happened to him, she saw movement in the trees.

A black squirrel darted out of the forest and leaped into her arms, pursued by two hungry-looking wolves. She stood her ground and raised her bow to frighten the wolves, and was surprised to see them give up, turn tail and head back into the forest without her firing so much as a warning shot. She looked down to check on the squirrel and found it was no longer clinging to her arm. Instead, the dark man stood beside her. He bowed, and in that moment she knew that it was him she’d been protecting. She had been bested, and this was the man she would marry.

***

When her firstborn children were twin wolf pups, some in the village took this as an evil omen. Others were convinced that the man she had married was a god. But she and the dark man cared for these pups as if they were any other children, and by the time her third and fourth children were born human, it was no longer strange.

The four children of Dusk lived together peacefully until they had grown enough to go their separate ways: the wolves returned to the forest with their divine father, and the human children stayed in the village with their mortal mother.

And so their descendants lived, in their separate worlds, until the tribes of humans and wolves had each grown to the point where something had to give, and war broke out among the Children of Dusk.

And Dusk wept, seeing his children dying around him, but for all his cunning he could not find a way to end the fighting. So he made the desperate journey to the top of the world to speak to the Sage. And there where the air is thinnest, on the night Her light was brightest, She gave him a shape to add to the pattern of the world, a spell that would change his children forever, so that they would never again forget their kinship.

And so he journeyed again, back down the world to the place where his children fought. And standing between humans and wolves, he set the Sage’s spell into the shape of the world, and set it free to do as it would.

And his children were transformed around him. No longer simply wolves, or merely humans, they would hereafter belong to both worlds, and move between them as their ancestor did. And so it is that we call werewolves the Children of Dusk.

The fighting did not end immediately, because no conscious being forgets a quarrel easily. But this moment was the beginning of peace among werewolves, and there was little left for their ancestor to do but gather the souls of all his kin who were lost and bring them West.

from Richards, L. “Antecyclonic Narrative in Modern Literature.“ Firialite Journal of Recovery. North Metropolis University Press: Sprout 518 ed. pp. 36-38.

Records retained by the Order of St. Fay suggest that the Twofold Quest was one of the foundational narrative structures of antecyclonic Onumbrica. In reconstruction, the story concerns a hero seeking something, usually impossible or very difficult to obtain; at their wits’ end, they seek out Firial in a ritualized journey structure usually culminating in an encounter on a mountaintop at the full moon, during which Firial grants our hero a partial answer that sends them on a second quest, often to the home of another god, often featuring intermediate intervention by yet other gods. Whether or not the hero ultimately reaches their goal, lessons are learned along the way that, with few exceptions, align with familiar Onumbrican values.

Among the most common variants of the Twofold Quest is one nicknamed the Search for Dusk, or Journey to the West, in which the hero has lost someone dear to them and seeks a means of returning them to life. Their encounter with Firial sends them toward Mistelin, who consoles the hero and, most commonly, teaches them that while death may not be reversible, grief is temporary, and that memories of lost loved ones are inevitably a blessing.

Variants in which the hero ignores Mistelin’s advice, and journeys on to seek out Feruoc and demand the return of their beloved, nearly always end disastrously, most often with the hero entering the land of the dead well before their lost love leaves Mistelin’s domain and can be reunited with them.

As tales of the gods were banished altogether to the realm of obscure folklore during the Senate era, few written variants of this tale can be found outside Fayite archives. The one that may be familiar to readers of this chapter is the epistolary novel Black Dog, published in serial form in the mid-380s in the North Metropolis Gazette under the byline Staniel Hill (almost certainly a pseudonym—see Section IV, Werewolves in Urban Fiction), and read to this day by introductory literature classes at all three universities. The story concerns the journey of Shade carpenter Perseverance Greenway from Huntswood to Mistelins following the death of her spouse, a loss from which she never truly recovers.

The structure of the second quest is clear in the text: her goal is the ancient home of Mistelin, which bore his name throughout the Senate era; the unnamed elderly boardinghouse keeper who takes her in and dispenses his wisdom about mortality at great length (Hill was almost certainly paid by the word) clearly representing the god himself; and the uncertainty in the ending about whether Greenway will return home mirroring the lack of closure often found in Search for Dusk tales. Various secondary characters encountered throughout the novel can be mapped to Revived gods (for a full analysis, see the Appendix).

The presence of the first quest in the novel is much less clear to the casual reader; in fact, it is entirely contained within the first installment. Greenway’s sibling, the only person in whom she confides about her plan to travel west, and in fact the person to whom every installment of the novel is addressed, is an archivist at Huntswood’s town hall, and by extension a member of the Order of St. Fay. Firial is, therefore, represented by the tradition which has represented her throughout postcyclonic history.