When the Wolves Howl

15. "Never forget where you come from."

Chapter XV: "Never forget where you come from."

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One card remained. Alyssa held it between her fingers gingerly at a distance. The scene on it made little sense, but then, none of them had made any sense at first. It was only after she'd endured the hell-scape visions that she understood what the papers were trying to tell her.

The card bore the image of a woman floating, her dress reaching her calves and moving about with a strong breeze. A forest stretched out below her and her head was titled toward a full moon. Alyssa thought her strangely beautiful. No, ephemeral was a more fitting word.

The longer she looked at it, the worse her head throbbed. None of the others had made her feel as though her head was about to crack in two pieces. This one would be bad, she could already tell from how thickly the blood was painted on and how strongly of rust and rot it smelled.

"Who do you think she is?" Haaris asked. Farah was strangely quiet that morning after wishing her a happy birthday. Alyssa summed it up to having too much on her mind with the Order meeting drawing closer and closer.

Alyssa shook her head. "I don't know. I've never seen her before."

He nodded and gave her a strained smile. "Are you ready?"

Again, Alyssa shook her head and chuckled bitterly. "Not in the slightest."

"You're strong, Alyssa." Farah had kinder eyes than usual. Alyssa faltered a little. "You have your grandmother's stubbornness, and your mother's determination. Those traits never failed them. It won't fail you either."

But it had failed them. In their last moments, neither stubbornness nor determination had saved them. Alyssa kept those thoughts to herself. They weren't fair to the women who bore her.

She stared at the page for a shorter time than the others. Blood swirled and shifted, drawing her in closer to the woman. She blinked, and when her eyes were open, she stood in the forest with only a sliver of moonlight reaching through the trees to illuminate her surroundings.

Someone sang. It was as soft as a spring breeze and she could faintly smell roses of all things. The melody was slow and sad, beckoning her to follow. Though she could barely hear it, Alyssa instinctively knew which direction it was coming from. She followed it as if in a trance.

It grew louder with every step she took through the dense mass of trees. Her heart stung the clearer she heard the woman's humming. It ached of grief, pulled her chest tightly till she could barely breathe, swarmed her senses with nothing but the deepest sorrow she'd ever felt. Tears stung her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks in warm streaks.

The instant she stepped through the trees and into the clearing, the forest lit up. A hundred fireflies floated about and the moon was bigger and brighter without any obstruction. Little white flowers danced with the wind back and forth and the smell of roses were strongest there, though she saw none.

The humming was loudest in the clearing. A faceless woman floated above the blades of grass, her dark hair covering most of what would have been the front of her face. The melody stopped as Alyssa neared the woman. Alyssa wasn't afraid of her. She would not allow harm to come to Alyssa.

"Who are you?" Alyssa whispered. She'd never seen anyone as ethereal as the woman before. She would have remembered her from her dreams, but the woman was foreign. Otherwordly, in a way.

"A friend," the woman said, and her words echoed like a hundred voices speaking all at once. She was soft though, like feathers falling toward the ground. "You've come a long way, Bright One."