#cryptid wolvden

[bone-wolves]

this is Sunshadow, a newer member of the Rowan's Shade Pack.

They are one of the Eyes of the Elder Spirits, along with Catilius.

I love them, but I can't figure out if I prefer them to stay looking like an Adolescent, or leave them with the adult look.

I guess Motherly is also an option, they look like they're a little withdrawn, focused on something other than the "real world"

hmmmmmm

[bone-wolves]

That Dream AI artwork app helpfully created some representations of Enit in her eldritch space wolf in the darkness beyond the stars form. I think she's gorgeous ❤️

[bone-wolves]

The Wolves of Rowan’s Shade Pack Are

Normal

Absolutely - Completely

Normal

[bone-wolves]

Ziolo got spooked out of her nap by a sound! But it's okay, big brother Czar will go check it out and show her there's nothing to be scared of.

(Czar has the Many Mouths aspect and Ziolo has the Many Eyes aspect)

[bone-wolves]

Enit was troubled.

It was an odd emotion, one she did not often feel. Over the few years of life in a mortal wolf body, she’d felt many emotions for the first time in a physical sense - joy, curiousity, anger, sadness. This troubled feeling, however, did not come often. She was more than capable of finding ways around problems, or finding ways out of problems (and sometimes into them) and normally she would tackle any issues she encountered head-on, with verve and a good dollop of optimism.

She was a spirit, after all! This mortal wolf form was temporary, and in the long road of her endless spirit-life, mortal problems were fleeting and inconsequential! Why not tackle these mortal issues with abandon, recklessly and eagerly?

It had worked well for her so far, all things considered. Well, at least she had thought so. But along the way, she had gotten quite attached to the mortal wolves she shared space with - she’d eagerly thrown herself into a wolf’s life, sharing in their highs and lows, birthing pups, hunting and scouting and enduring injuries just to see what it was all about! And because of it, rather than despite it, she had grown closer to her pack mates, to her friends, and the closer she had grown, the more she empathized with them.

That, that, was why she was now feeling troubled.

Arcturus disappearing on a scouting trip had shaken the pack, but it had shaken Enit as well. Never before had a wolf she knew personally suddenly disappeared from her spirit-sight. No matter how far she reached her powers, how she listened and how she looked, she could not track Arcturus down. While the pack members hadn’t quite blamed Enit, either for Arcturus disappearing or Enit’s inability to find her immediately, it was obvious they were unhappy with the situation, and maybe moreso, with the revelation that Enit was not the omnipotent being they had thought of her as.

Enit hadn’t wanted them to think her omnipotent, her powers without equal and without limit, she hadn’t, but it had felt good, in the beginning, to have these mortal wolves look up to her, be in awe of her strangeness and honor her powers and turn to her for guidance. She hadn’t meant to lie to them, or to make them think she was something she was not, but she hadn’t stopped any of the rumors or gossip that had reached her either. This was all coming back to bite her in the rump now, she realized.

When, in the early days, pups had gotten sick or gone missing or were just unnecessary, in Enit’s eyes, for the good of the pack - she’d been able to whisk their spirits away and wipe the pack’s minds of them. When rumbles of argument had rose within the pack back then, she hadn’t thought twice to exert her influence to make wolves calm, take a step back, even forget about the argument as a whole. But now, it didn’t feel quite right to do any of that in regards to the recent disappearances. How could she take the memory of a daughter and sister away from Tara and Luceo? How could she take the memory of a loved pack member from the others? She could see in others whose memories she had wiped that while the memories were gone, some remnants of emotion remained - mothers looked for their pups, friends for friends, unease crept into the minds of those who were made to forget tragic or painful accidents whenever they neared the site of those accidents.

So Enit hadn’t done a wipe when Arcturus disappeared, electing instead to focus on trying to find her, even though her spirit-sight seemed blocked. And now that the hunters, the Happy Hunters, the oldest and most experienced, had disappeared, so soon after Bellatrix had left them, Enit knew she couldn’t do the wipe again. Too many wolves knew them, too many memories had been shared, too much emotion - even if the pack forgot the details, they’d remember the feelings, and without an answer to those feelings they would never be able to settle again.

Being mortal, Enit thought with a sigh, was more work and more mess than she had thought!

It should have been easier - it should have been so simple, to wipe memories, remove spirits, mix and match wolves as it suited her, as she had planned, but somewhere along the way it had all gotten so mixed up and complicated.

“Enit!”

A panicked voice broke into her thoughts, and Enit perked her ears, turning to see Igra running toward her through the trees, bounding over the wetter patches of ground and nearly sliding to a stop next to her.

“Enit! Please - your help, can you help?” The other wolf whimpered, ears plastered back to her head, body shaking. “My pup! My pup is gone, I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find him!”

“Which pup?” Enit asked, turning to face her and already setting her eyes aloft, her senses out.

“Little Grayfoot! T-the dark one, with the pale blue yes and the spotted nose.” Igra whimpered, looking at Enit with desperation in her eyes. Enit felt her worry with a pang inside her own chest - she knew how much Igra loved her pups, how she doted on them and how well she cared for them.

“I’m looking for him, Igra,” Enit said softly, her eye-sights drifting among the tree trunks, “Come, walk with me.”

While her eyes searched the visible realm, seeing through the trunks and grasses and looking for the warm bodies of wolves, her hearing set to pick up on the echoes of spirit-movements of the mortal wolves. She could see the vibrations of their very being in the air, floating out and out in waves, and as they walked, Igra talking hurriedly, worriedly, beside her, Enit followed those waves, looked for the tiny pup ones specifically, followed them back to the pups and each time seeing that it wasn’t Grayfoot.

And then, she saw him. As they climbed a rise, a shape appeared at the top, coalescing as if from mist - a dark furred pup with shocking icy eyes and a wide, tongue-lolling grin. Enit saw him, and her tail began to lift, but then she noticed that it wasn’t her physical eyes that saw him - that there were no vibrations coming from him - that, through the gray fur of his paws, she could see the grass and dirt of the trail he stood on.

“Oh,” She breathed, pausing, and Igra caught onto her tone immediately, entire body tensing as she stopped next to Enit.

“What, what is it?“ She asked, breathlessly. “Did you find him?”

Enit turned to her, spirit-eyes returning, her hearing diminishing to a mortal wolf’s, and nodded.

Igra looked into her eyes, searched them as Enit stayed silent, and within them she found the answer she had never wanted.

-

Pietro had found the pup while Enit and Igra had been on their search. Little Grayfoot’s small body had been untouched but for the fluff of dried foam on his lips, and next to him lay the chewed remains of oval-shaped green leaves and green, round berries. He had wandered off while playing with the other pups - they had many of them that year - and even if someone had found him sooner, there would have been nothing they could have done to save him once he’d eaten those berries.

Igra’s heartache was deep, and for Enit it was deafening - the depth of emotion the mother wolf felt echoed out of the mortal realm and into the spirit-space where Enit’s true self was. Igra was an older wolf, and this had been her first litter ever in her life, and Enit could feel the ache of loss, the despair, the thoughts that she might never have a pup like Little Grayfoot again, so bold, so daring, so clever.

Enit didn’t know how to help her. Part of her wanted to take the memories of the little pup from Igra, from the others, to dull the ache. Another part of her knew that even if she did, that ache would remain, and with it would be confusion over what had caused it, what had created that hole in her heart and the heart of the other wolves. But taking the memories might make the pain pass quicker - or taking the memories might make it last longer. Might make it better, might make it worse, might - might…

Igra lay at the root under which they’d buried Little Grayfoot, giving him to the care of the Rowan tree as they did with all the pack members whose bodies had passed on, and Enit could only look on with sympathy, for once unable to be reckless and optimistic and act with abandon. For once, she couldn’t act at all.

[bone-wolves]

The ground beneath her feet had turned, quite suddenly, to packed earth broken here and there by large, flat stones. Brown grasses grew in cracks and crevices and around the bases of charred trunks that might once have been conifers. She paused in mid-step, ears perked and tail tucked, glancing around herself as she tried to understand what had happened.

She’d been leaving the Rowan Pack’s territory and crossing into the prairie. The world before her had been flat and filled with yellow green grass almost to the horizon, patches of wildflowers dotting the landscape under a cheerful summer sun.

One step, and she was suddenly somewhere unrecognizable - the sun above beat down hard and hot on her back, dry twigs cracked under her paws, and the world on all sides seemed to vanish into a deep, yellowish-brown mist.

Now, she wasn’t a scaredy-wolf. She was capable and reliable and though her skills as a scout were fresh and her experience limited, she was confident that her lessons with her mother would serve her well in this unexpected and strange experience. Glancing around, she found what she was looking for - high ground, in the form of a large outcrop of stone that jutted out of the earth at an angle. Padding over to it, she placed her paws onto the flat side of it to test if it would hold her weight and was struck by another strange sight - her paws! Her paws were see-through, almost non-existent, and the stone beneath them could almost-clearly be seen through them. 

Yes, she had inherited her mother’s haziness, but normally she could tell if that aspect was working on her body - a tingle, a twitch, some sign would let her know her aspect had activated. Often it happened without her even thinking about it, sometimes it happened when she wanted it to (but only sometimes, Enit had told her she needed to practice more if she wanted to make real use of it). But now...she hadn’t felt a thing, and the way her paws, her legs, looked see through seemed different somehow, not like she had gone misty, but like she had just almost-disappeared. She looked like thin river ice, that you could almost just see if you looked at the right angle, but could see completely through if you looked from another.

caaaawwrrrr

The guttural, deep sound broke her out of her shock, and she jerked her head skywards to see a group of black birds fly overhead, crying out in their deep, craggy voices to her. Most of them flew to land in the charred branches, but one large bird circled down to land jauntily on the very highest tip of the stone outcrop above her.

“You, wolf,” The raven said, bright black eyes flashing in the harsh sunlight. “Bright wolf, see-through wolf - what do you do in our lands?”

“Your...lands?” She tilted her head, one ear twitching. “What lands are these? I was nowhere near them, I was heading for the prairie.”

“Prairie?” The raven caw-ed a laugh, “This is no prairie!”

“I can see that,” She said half-stepping back and taking one paw off the stone. “I’m Arcturus, from the Rowan Pack, have you heard of us?”

“OH!”

The raven stepped quickly down the stone, closer to her, head turning this way and that.

“Oh! OH!”

The ravens in the trees set off again, their caawwwr-caaawwrrr’s echoing around Arcturus.

“You are one of those wolves!” The raven fluffed their neck, nestling their head into the pillow of feathers. “Ah yes, that makes sense.”

Arcturus wasn’t sure how, and her ears twitched to lay back as she eyed the raven before her.

“How does it make sens-”

“These lands,” The raven interrupted loudly, cheerfully, seeming to be amused by the whole situation. “Are flying lands, distant lands, and they are raven lands. Only we can come, and only we can leave. The first raven to find these lands followed one of their flock-mate’s spirits past the edges of the horizon, and into the space between the stars, and found them! And when they returned, they taught their children to find them, and their children taught their children, and now we all know how to reach these lands.”

“O...okay...” Arcturus’s ears flattened even more. “But I can’t fly, and I’m no raven, so how did I get here? And how do I leave?”

“You! You are a spirit wolf,” The raven said, eyeing her with a stateliness that comes with knowing. “You, you are a between wolf.”

“What?”

“And to leave-” The raven went on, “You leave like you came!”

“But-” Arcturus shook her head, “But I don’t know how I came here! I took a step and was here and-”

“Step in,” The raven cawr-ed, “Step out.”

“Step in!” The ravens in the trees called out, “Step out!”

“I don’t understand!”

“Step in!” The raven on the stone called, hopping, flapping, into the air. “Step out!”

“Wait!” Arcturus said as the dark bird lifted higher and higher on the wind. The sun shone harshly into her eyes, nearly blinding her, and the ravens in the trees taking flight looked like a scattering of dark stars against the bright sun’s backdrop. “Come back!”

The ravens circled, called out, and as they flew she ran after them, twigs scattering, grasses rustling.

“Help me!” She cried out.

Step in! Step out! came the reply-

Step in

Step out

[bone-wolves]

The full moon glowed softly just over the horizon, bathing the world in a silvery light that glinted off of every frost-tipped blade of grass and bare branch. Eridani couldn’t pull her eyes from it - there seemed to be something in the moon, within it, and around her the lands were filled with the voices of thousands of wolves, howling in a near deafening chorus, talking, sharing, mourning, raging.

But in reality, there were no howls. In reality, the lands were silent, the forest quiet but for the rustle of the last dead leaves on tree branches shifting in the soft night wind. The howls she heard were somewhere inside of her, in her head, in her chest. When she looked up at the sky, looked past the moon, she could see wispy cloud-like apparitions drifting in a very un-cloud like fashion. They seemed to move with a purpose, slowly and softly, but with purpose.

“You see it, don’t you?” The sound of her mother’s voice came from her side, soft and low. “Hear it, feel it. More than the others.”

“I see it mother,” Eridani said, turning her head to face the older wolf, the lead wolf, the thing that wore a wolf for a body. She smiled and tilted her head in the endearing way she’d done since she was little, the way that would often get her what she wanted from anyone - even her mother. “I hear it and I...I feel it. But I don’t understand it - can’t you explain? Even a little.”

Enit blinked at her, ears perked as she eyed her daughter for a long while, her face nearly expressionless. So hard to read sometimes, when she forgot “how to wolf”, as others in the pack put it. Then her lips relaxed into a grin and her forehead wrinkled with amusement.

“But I have, Eri.” Her tail wagged a couple times. “There is this world, there are other worlds, there are veils between them. For mortal creatures, the veils are thick and impenetrable.”

“And they aren’t for me?” Eridani asked, shifting to face her mother. “You haven’t really explained, you know. Not what it means for me.”

“Well, that’s because I don’t know what it means for you.” Enit said with a wolf-chuckle. “You’re you, not me, and not any of the others. I can see that you have something that connects you to the worlds beyond the veil, that you have more of me in you than the mortal wolves. But I don’t know what that means for you, exactly.”

Eridani’s ears dropped, and she pawed at the ground.

“But...you know everything,” She said, head lowering so she was looking up at Enit with her best puppy-eyes. She was far too old to be using puppy-eyes on anyone other than her mother - not even her father would let her get away with it now - but Enit wagged her tail, leaning down to lick at her nose.

“I know much, but I don’t know everything,” Enit said. She pushed her forehead against Eridani’s, and Eridani rubbed her cheek against her mother’s. “I can’t tell you what you will see, what you’ll learn, or where this may take you. But I’ll be here to help you, with anything you might need.”

Then Enit laughed, a loud barking laugh as she pushed her body against Eridani’s companionably, rubbing her shoulder against her daughters, and chuckled out, “You wolves! You need so much help, indeed!”

[bone-wolves]

Not all of Enit's early attempts at sharing her essence and aspects went well. The pup, who had gained her many-limbed aspect, was absolutely covered in additional legs, paws and claws. They stood uncertainly before her, looking up at her with a miserable, fearful expression in their eyes as Enit eyed them curiously and wondered just what had gone wrong this time. She had the feeling that this pup wouldnt be the first, and she knew she had a decision to make regarding the ones who came out not quite right.

To get rid of them, erase their bodies from this plane and set their spirits free, or....or maybe....