Everything

Autumn Rain returns from the Umbra The air congeals around me, like an invisible weight settling in. But that isn't the least pleasant result of stepping back into the physical world. Naomi is.

“You find anything?” she says in her noisy human speech, instead of using the High Tongue. Just to annoy me, I think. Her hair messily piled up on top of her head, like a bird's nest, and she wears no sleeves and tight jeans. I grunt and pass by her, leaving my tail hanging listlessly. Discourtesy repaid. Let her speak her tongue, and I will speak mine. She follows me. “Can I take that to mean 'no'?”

The dim corridor widens into a long half-dug, half-built space, where thick curtains hang between workspaces and bookshelves, ritual circles, and meditation alcoves. A smell of dust and old herbs lives here. I pass them all by, heading toward the far end where another curtain is pulled closed. I nose it aside and go through. She follows me again.

“Rain, are you seriously gonna make me guess with a bunch of wolf charades?” she says, leaning against the wall, and folding her arms. I look at her over my shoulder. It isn't my fault she refuses to learn how to speak like a wolf properly. But I sigh and change until my fangs will only slightly get in the way of her garish language, to stop her complaining. For her benefit, I pull on one of the loose robes that hang on a hook nearby. She raises an eyebrow, seeing my Glabro form. “Would it kill you to be human for five minutes?”

“I have my pride,” I tell her. “And my name is Autumn Rain.”

“Fine. What'd you find?” “Nothing.” I approach the makeshift bed made of feathers and leaves, and crouch beside it. On it sleeps a wolf, although he's more than just a wolf. He's like us. I like to think he is, more specifically, like me. Why else would he sleep in Lupus form? He's been sleeping for a long time. I don't know how long. Since before the sept moved into this caern, at least. “None of the spirits knew any rite or Gift to do it. They just said it must have been Bear.”

“Bear, huh? Great, because we're on such great terms with him.” She snorts. “Poor slob's gonna just keep sleeping 'til the Apocalypse has us all for lunch, I guess.”

“It won't,” I snap. My almost-human ears try to push forward. “And he won't.”

“Damn, you are just the queen of wishful thinking, ain't you?” She comes over to crouch too, across from me on the other side of the bed, to watch the sleeper. Her arms drape casually over her knees, but she furrows her brow.

“Mock me if you want. I don't need your help.” She meets my gaze. “Need it or not, you got it anyway. We found him, he's our responsibility. What'd you have in mind?”

I stand, looking down at him and going still. What has he seen? What does he know? Maybe he's slept for a hundred years, or a thousand, and comes to us with hope and secrets. Maybe he brings a message from a people long lost. Maybe he was sent to us as an ultimate weapon. I must know.

My decision resolves before me like ice crystals in a freezing pond. “If no one knows any rite, then I'll have to forge my own.”