It was difficult sometimes. But wasn't anything? Occasionally he wondered what it meant to be happy, but not often. After all, he had work to do. Hunting.
Hunting was not the joy of the kill, not now. It was a thing that must be done-kill or be killed, take life or forfeit it. These were things he had been taught long ago, in the dark when he was young, when his brothers too were young, before the killing-time, when blood was wet and a joy to the senses. He had not understood these things then.
Blood smelled like rust when it dried on your hands.
He had gone mad those first few days after the killing-time. It had hurt like a mortal wound just to remember the look on his smallest brother's face; the yelps and the wailing screams had haunted him like a restless spirit of fire in his soul. He had wanted to forgive. He could not.
He learned instead to forget.
His da's mouth had not reproached him, and had in fact comforted him with the lies the others told, how it was a necessary evil and it was a good thing that he had done it, but the rebuke in the bearer's eyes had been clear just the same. His father had stayed silent, had simply sent him out to find a mate. He did not want a mate, or cubs to remind him.
He did not want another killing-time.
It was dark in the woods at night, and the blood when he killed was hot and fresh, but never satisfying. He had learned to kill silently, so fast that the victim could not make a sound and remind him of his brother's cries. His father would have been proud had he known that his son could stalk a herd of deer to their night-ground and take one while the rest slept peacefully on, but he had never gone home to tell him. He could not bear to go back to that place.
It was difficult. Everything was. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he had let his littermates live, but not often. After all, he had work to do.
Hunting.
His den was cold in winter. The snow fell outside in huge soft flakes, freezing everything as he was frozen, and the North Wind howled out tortured screams. The sound was worse than anything he had ever heard before, save one thing. He did not want to recall that. But the night refused to give him rest, letting the wind scream louder, more sharply, until the sound was filled with all the agonies of the universe, stretched so thin it could have snapped, and the blasts of wind when they came bore with them the scent of warm red blood.
His hands had been drenched in his brother's blood.
Shaken, he started up, nostrils flaring in an instinctive attempt to gather more of the scent, chest heaving with the turmoil of the memory. But even on the verge of his madness, his sense of smell did not fail him. This was no illusion. The mindless squealing converged in his head as recognition pierced his panic. Pain filled those cries, and terror: the crying of a cub in agony. Not for help; help was beyond the comprehension of the one who could create such an unearthly sound. This one thought it was dying...
His brother had been begging when he died.
He gave an answering cry and took to his heels.
The cub was lying on its side in the snow, its blood staining the white purity scarlet, its face buried in the stinging expanses of cold, and the noise had not ceased from the first moment he had heard it. Slender hands fisted among the fallen flakes of ice, the narrow body convulsing with screams; he could feel its heart pounding. His hands were rougher than he meant them to be when he seized the shrieking cub by drenched, russet curls and, shaking with the memories, flipped it over into his arms and pinned it there, his mind unable to recognize it as anything other than the source of his misery. The slim, chilly-skinned cub began to flail, its shrieking slipping higher into shrilling, and abruptly, nearly frantic, he slapped it.
"Stop!"
His voice surprised both of them. He had not spoken since he left his home, and he had forgotten what it sounded like. The cub in his arms ceased screaming and breathing simultaneously and went rigid, its glassy, inhuman eyes fixed unseeing upon his face.
"Hush." He tried to gather his scattered wits, pulling the cub closer. "Hush." Both his hands slipped down as gently as he could manage to the hem of its water-heavy furs, rubbing awkwardly at a thin ankle. The cub had forgotten that breathing was necessary at all, and was fast turning blue, but he had no remedy for that save slapping it soundly once more. It gasped in a shocked breath, but only to begin screaming again. He felt he would go mad. Left at a complete loss, he settled for clamping a palm firmly over its chapped lips, shaking it hard and using his new-found voice to berate and question it.
"Hush! Why are you crying? Who are you? Be quiet and speak to me!"
The cub quieted, gasping in rapid breaths and moaning like an injured animal from behind his hand, but it did not speak. He was not at all sure, once it was quiet and he could think half-rationally, that it could speak. He released its mouth, running his hands over its body to see where it was harmed and how badly, but it did not seem to care at all, only went on gasping in breath after breath. He knew that was not right. It should not be breathing so quick, so frightened. It needed comfort, but how did one give comfort? What had he done when his brother was frightened? Oh, but it hurt to think of his brothers... He forced himself to focus on the question. Anything, anything to stop the terrible pain and fear in those eyes.
Rock it gently, his mind informed him gradually. Stroke it like this, and speak softly to it. Tell it that everything will be all right, then warm it and feed it and then let it sleep. He obeyed his thoughts, murmuring nonsense to it as he lifted it into his arms and carried it to his den.
The mountains were feral when the North Wind blew. Icy breath whistled through trees already thinned off by foraging deer the hunters had not gotten again this year. They were afraid to come here, all too afraid to even whisper the name of the place. He had made a name for himself among the new generation of Kindred that hunted the grounds between Ielra and the Rnys, and none of them dared show so much as a paw in his territory, though he had never threatened any of them. Still, they were not closely akin to him, and what guardian patriarch would truly trust a stranger without proof of their worthiness?
He had certainly given them no proof of that, and he had purposely strayed so far from his own birthlands that none of his own pack would ever chance near him either. His pack did not wander this far from their home, and he had chosen this place to settle designedly because his only neighbors would stay far off from him, ensconced in their mountain villages and separated from him by the unforgiving River. Silence was golden to those with a mind already overfull.
It came as no surprise, then, that the cub's furs were soaked with river-water, nor that his body was near frozen through. Winter on the Rnys was nothing to scoff at, and the cub was no more than a wisp of a creature to face such a biting freeze. No, it was the bruised look, and the wounds, that surprised him. No beast made wounds like this, nor did they make wide bands of bruising all around pale throats, or dark fingermarks on over-thin arms. It sent shivers down his back, colder than the wind outside his door, to see them. He had not known that this pack needed practice the killing-time.
A convulsive shiver shook his body at the thought of this cub, suddenly an object of hatred in his own home. He could still see the look of hurt, terror, and pleading confusion on his own younger brother's face, just before the last blow fell...
He let out a hoarse cry, and the cub's great green eyes watched him in open and guileless questioning. Cub's terror had gone, but not the blank innocence or the muteness. Cub was forgetting. Cub wanted to forget, and he did not have the heart to force the little one to remember. Not a thing like that. Perhaps, if Cub's littermates had indeed had the killing-time, then it was best that he never remember. Perhaps it would be best if the cub could never see again loved ones in such a light as he had seen his own, in memories to dog sleep and waking, pictures to relive pain in.
Prisons were not always made with walls.
Shaking, he pulled his thoughts away from that dark place and returned to tending the cub's many wounds, while he could still see them by the light of the drowsing sun. Fire was not a thing that any Kindred liked to consider, but he wondered briefly if Cub would not be afraid in the dark. Dreams grew in darkness as flowers in the rain, and dreams were hard.
He smiled. Hard.
Wasn't anything?
