A Wolf's Kiss

Chapter III - A Kiss of War

Jagur awoke in his bed to find it had gone cold. He was alone. Ceres had left. Immediately when he realized he sat up in alert, searching the room for him with his still sleepish eyes. Ceres was nowhere to be found. He was confused. Had the boy run away? He couldn't have gotten far. How fast could one boy move through ice and snow?

He looked through the window, the sun had not yet risen. It was dark out, and the sky was full of stars. On the edge of the hills, just in front of the lake, Jagur noticed a bright light. A dot of pure white, sitting on the snow covered ground, almost as if a star had come down to earth. Jagur rubbed his eyes in disbelief, it was Ceres.

The wolf, still clothed in his pants of leather, leapt out of the bed and onto his feet. He left the Chief's Longhouse and hurried through the snow. He didn't even bother to put on shoes. Even he, a wolf of Krigarstad, was freezing through the early morning air as he made his journey to the lake. Every hair on his body stood up, he crossed his arms, desperate to conserve what little warmth he had left. It was no use.

"What is this creature...?" Jagur cursed to himself in Vargstongue when he finally reached Ceres.

He heard the boy muttering to himself, though it didn't sound like words. It sounded melodic, though not intelligible. As he listened more closely, it seemed as if Ceres were speaking some sort of language which he had never heard.

"Ceres." He finally said, shivering.

The boy stopped his muttering, and turned around. Jagur had found him kneeling on the ground, but the snow around him had melted. Jagur couldn't believe what he had seen. In the daylight, Ceres' skin and his hair reflected the sun, but he was not simply reflecting light now. It was coming from him. His entire body had taken on a silver and white hue, one that put the color of the snow to shame, and could be rivaled only by the stars.

Jagur looked at him with eyes wide. He had first thought the boy to be beautiful when they first met, but now he felt that he had never even known what beauty was, until he saw this mysterious foreign boy, kneeling on a ground of melted snow.

"Forgive me my Chief.... I had not wanted to wake you." Ceres apologized, looking at him with those doe-like eyes of his. "But it was very important that I come out... and see it." Ceres raised a glowing hand to the night sky, filled of stars.

Jagur felt himself blushing lightly. He said nothing at first, not wanting to waste any words on something so simple a matter. He instead sat down on the melted ground beside Ceres. Again he was surprised, he was warm. In fact it felt as if he were sitting next to a low-burning flame. Jagur cuddled up to the boy for warmth, and put an arm around his shoulder.

"Why you come here?" Jagur asked in a low voice, speaking in the common language.

"To look at the stars. To see what my Queen shows me..." Ceres shifted his eyes to the sky.

Jagur was confused. He looked up, and he saw where a bunch of white dots. Beautiful as they were, they were there every night... no reason to get out of bed and run through the snow. "What you see?"

"It depends on what she wants me to see..." Ceres said, turning to the taller wolf. "Sometimes she shows me things that happen far from here... sometimes she shows things that have not yet happened... other times she shows me the true hearts of men. Her wisdom is great, but she shares only as she pleases... and sometimes we cannot fully understand, because she is far wiser than us."

"What she show you tonight?" Jagur asked curiously

"... a clash of silver and iron... a war of light and darkness. An enemy that grows more powerful each day... and hills of snow covered in blood."