Wolf Moon

Chapter 2.2 - Asta

It was strange to face her childhood friend again now.... after so much had changed. Of course, Asta was happy and felt an old bond, a feeling like the little girls they had been back then. But there was also the wound of many losses she had not shared with Aeryn. So much time had passed and Asta's life had changed too, though she had never left this place.

Shortly after Aeryn had disappeared and the rumors of her parents' death had circulated, Asta had felt fiery anger. This anger was good because it displaced the sadness and despair that followed the loss of her best friend and confidant. Her anger was directed at the werewolf that was blamed for the Hawkers' deaths, and for some time Asta would have liked nothing better than to search the woods for that very animal... And hunt it down. No matter how. But her mother, Brianna, wouldn't let her. Of course, she wouldn't.

A wolf that kills wolves? Asta, we have to stick together. Why don't you understand that?

Brianna's words echoed clearly in her head, and that even though her mother had been missing for so long. Shortly after the search was abandoned, Asta had no one but her grandmother to share her grief with. Erik Raigan, her father, tried to sink his pain into work and the following years made him closed and depressed. Too many blows had come down on the happy little family. But that was how it was in Fuchsbergen. They were not the only ones who had lost someone, and as the last remaining healer, Asta knew that very well.

Meanwhile, the old hatred lay buried under years of work and deprivation. Asta's grandmother died and she alone took over the care of her fellow men, as well as the household. Together she and Erik kept their heads above water, but there were also hard winters when her father could hardly earn any money. While he was slowly becoming an old man, she was getting to an age where marriage was a big deal. More than once, fathers approached Erik, making offers or wanting to make a deal. They were all disappointed. Unlike most family heads, Erik stuck to his promise to give Asta the choice. There were reasons for that.

Reasons that also now weighed on their minds as Asta stepped outside to the mercenaries. They were here because the mayor of Fuchsbergen had offered a reward. Gold on the hand for the one who hunted down the werewolf and finally brought peace back to the village. Yet these mercenaries had no idea what they were messing with. They did not know that behind the fur and claws rested something other than an intelligent animal. For the ordinary people were bent on the greatest secret of the werewolves. Their ability to transform.

Some were born with dark blood, others transformed by a bite. But the night fever made them all what they were. Very intelligent, strong, and hungry creatures who got bored quickly and to whom hunting gave incomparable pleasure. But this was not to say that they were uncontrolled beasts who tore everything that was not out of reach at the count of three. It was just that things had developed so drastically in Fuchsbergen that it probably seemed just that. Asta understood the fear, the worries of the people and she wanted to help them. In her way, she did. She tended to their wounds, asked only what people could give in return, and always tried somehow to... to mediate. Because she was not the only wolf in Fuchsbergen, of course not.

The small conversation between the mercenary and Aeryn snapped Asta out of her thoughts again. One of the men asked for a bath, and the healer didn't miss the way his expression brightened at the prospect of hot water.'A clean mercenary,' she thought, amused. Miracles do happen after all. Then her friend started moving and Asta turned to the remaining ones. The poor horses' hooves must have soon frozen to the ground.