Our skin gets thicker, living out in the snow
CREVAN
When Crevan started the journey to climb Beqanna’s fabled Mountain, he thought long and hard about whether or not what he was doing was a mistake. He picked his way along the narrow trail, surefooted and comfortable in the familiar body of his wolf, and thought about how trips the Mountain had usually always been associated with danger. After all, he’d been here once before.
As a young pup he’d been called to quest, something not uncommon and considered a strange honor among their kind. He remembered being in Beqanna, but not the same one that surrounded them now. That Beqanna had been dark and uninviting, perilous to travel through and filled with all sorts of danger. He and a few others had been tasked with simply surviving in that world and until now, Crevan hadn’t really thought of that nightmare. It seemed so unreal back then, but he’d come out on the other side as an immortal and ever since, nothing had been the same for him.
Looking up and ahead, the large wolf could see where the trail began to curve and wind through sharp, stony peaks. Up here the air seemed thin, just like it had during the first leg of his quest. He paused and took a laboured breath, smelling the faint trails other horses had left behind for him to follow and reminding himself that this was reality, he was fine and nothing was going to leap from the shadows and shove him off the precipice. Crevan swallowed and pushed ahead, hardly able to keep the hair along his spine from stiffening and rising up. It just seemed so quiet… too quiet.
He shook his head, blinked a few times. Stop it he told himself, slipping past exposed, lichen-covered rock and over stiff mountain grass. A chill wind howled through the narrow passageway and he turned his ears back, narrowing his eyes. Hadn’t it been midday when he started? Now the sky seemed clouded and the earth around him shadowy. “When I was a boy my mother used to tell me stories.” he spoke aloud as he walked, hearing the eerie echo of his own voice as a reply.
“My ancestors, the Direwolf, used to roam the world. Bold as bears, Circinae would tell me.” The wolf muttered, faintly smiling at the thought of his first pack leader and creator. “She said their blood runs through my veins - that I’m nearly big as one anyways. I’d like to make that true.” He told the rocks and wind, coming to a stop before taking a seat.
“With the fairies blessing I’d ask to be more than a wolf. Let me become the ancient creature; let me become a direwolf shifter.”
@[Officials] from public approvals
