dirty paws
look i wrote a thing! tell me what you think
They laughed and called her Queen of the Dogs, but it was a title she took and turned it around with pride. She wore it like the mantle of deerskin her pack had brought down so long ago, but the pale golden fur did not dim with time, and the six-pointed antlers never lost their velvet. Her brothers and sisters pointed and laughed, locked her outside to sleep with the dogs she loved, but the people of the country loved her because she and her dogs of wolves and dogs of men hunted for them on those cold, wintry nights.
Snow covered the land seven months out of the year, thick and freezing, and it was during these dark months, when she had been hunting for the small village in the valley, that it happened. Her father's spirit was carried away by the Deathmare, and by the time she came back, the Deathmare had to return for three of her six older siblings.
Three were left, her oldest brother and two sisters -- one sister had driven out the others, and now held the castle while the other two skulked away, plotting and luring away as many soldiers of their late brothers that they could. Shanfry sat back in horror, sad for her father even though he had never stopped his sons from throwing her out in the cold, and sad for her men that she had left at the castle. Not only the ones who had died, but the ones who had willingly left, the ones who had always begrudged being a part of her company and now desired to join the ranks of a stronger, saner leader.
Wells knew Shanfry was not insane. Compared to her siblings, she was positively down-to-earth. He followed her as she ran back into the forest, and so did the small contingent of his soldiers, because they remembered the way she had treated them, and knew that Shanfry's remaining sisters and brother would never be so good to them. But Shanfry and her pack outran the soldiers, until they were deep in the forest and Wells had to stop them before his wounded men died from a loss of blood.
The princess who now occupied the castle and put the crown on her own head would hunt them, but not as vigorously as her other siblings, who were undoubtedly raising their banners. Civil war would be long and terrible, but the only person Wells ever wanted to see on the throne would be Shanfry. She actually cared for the people, and surely those she had fed would rally around her. But Shanfry did not like the killing of humans.
She would chase down a buck with the fullest of glee, but that was with an understanding of nature, how her dogs and people had to eat. But never for fun, and Wells couldn't count the times she had let her siblings beat her, before her dogs had enough and the royal heirs learned to stop only because they feared those flashing white fangs and the gleaming of Wells' sword.
It took days before they found her, romping with her dogs in the mouth of a large cave. She had already made friends with the wild wolves of the forest that lived there, and they tussled playfully with the tamer dogs. Shanfry didn't say a word when Wells and his men arrived, and they set up a camp. She did not run again, but as Wells watched, she grew deeper into herself, spending more time on all fours with her dogs instead of staying human and remembering coming home to see her father's dead body laid out and her siblings battling mercilessly over it.
He tried to draw her out, and sometimes saw flashes of her as the princess. She would stand up straight and let the antlered hood fall from her head and speak in a clear, royal voice that, "No, Wells, I will not fight my family. I will do as I have always done. Hunt and feed my dogs and then you and then my people. Now leave me alone," and then she would drop to her knees and cuddle with the newest litter of pups, while Wells stomped away in frustration.
His men could not subsist only on the meat her packs brought in, so Wells would ride into town to trade and he would see the turmoil raging across the country. He saw the fear in farmers' eyes, and as his men built small, sturdy houses around Shanfry's cave and quietly recovered their families from various towns and cities, Wells planned for the day Shanfry's siblings would be winnowed down to one, and that one would come for her. It would be too much to hope that they would write her off as harmless in the woods -- no threat to their crown could exist. Shanfry either had to die, or to rule.
Wells hoped that she would realize that, but she refused to go into the towns by day, instead bringing them the carcasses of game by night as it snowed and snowed and the people were too afraid to go outside, in fear of some soldier cutting them down or taking their children. Wells made contacts, talked to those simple countrymen who knew how to use a sword or their hands to hurt, instead of build, and told them to practice. The time would come, he told them, and Shanfry would need them, and because Shanfry had fed them, they all agreed.
But all of Wells' plans splintered apart, when one day he came out and watched Shanfry romp with the dogs, and suddenly become one of them, a furry, golden wolf with antlers growing behind her ears.
Somehow, he was not surprised.