Wolf's Desire

Where the blue birds sing

The greatest legend of the first 'werewolf' in the town of Everburn dates back to the Dark Ages, after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The small town was a mere village back then, guarded by the mountains covered in frost and noble fir trees. It was known as the place 'where the blue birds sing'.

Morgana Powell, a silent, dark-haired maiden lived there with her mother, keeping pigs and raising piglets, and secretly practicing sorcery. Morgana's mother taught her the ways of balance and chaos. But the darkest of magicks Morgana was taught to fear.

"Stay away from what you cannot sway in your way," Morgana's mother would chant in her daughter's ear.

But an obedient daughter was ill-fated; peasants and neighbors began to speak about the girl having the legs of a rooster. While preparing a bath for the baby, Morgana's mother unwittingly spilled a pitcher of boiling water on the poor child's legs, and doomed her to never being proposed by a single bachelor in the village.

Children kept away from her, and old bastard housewives shut their windows whenever Morgana marched the streets. Like a lonely fortress, she kept her secrets intact and her pain disguised. She was an outcast. Everyone made sure Morgana was not in their sight... everyone except a boy by the name of Griffin. His friendship was the only unscathed fragment of Morgana's broken childhood.

The boy grew up to become the most honored knight in the place where the blue birds sing. People began to call him Griffin the Lionheart. He shielded them from evil and granted them protection in the times of unrequited prayers.

The only spellbinding antidote for Morgana's pain was her hope that his marriage proposal would come one day. And indeed, it did. But, not quite in the desired direction.

When Morgana hears of Griffin's proposal to Alys Norwood, the fairest and wealthiest of them all, envy and resentment devour her being. Morgana unearths the ancient darkness inside of her forsaken heart, and is forced to embrace what she was taught to fear.

Instead of confronting such, she becomes the messenger of evil and the bearer of storms. After finding an unholy book among her mother's belongings, Morgana casts a curse on Griffin and his offspring. The forsaken maiden condemns the knight's entire bloodline by chaining them to the life of a lonely wolf, bound to its voracious, predatory instincts and slavery of the moon.

But, in all of her malevolence lied a glimmer of virtue; along with the curse, Morgana gifted Griffin and his descendants with immense will, power and dominion.

"Find thy gifts and find thy misery in which I grant to you," chanted Morgana as the skies wrapped in the calamitous shadow, "but beware my wrath and know my heart no longer belongs to you, as I welcome my newfound darkness with the morning dew..."

The Lycanthropic Legends of Everburn - Lisa Crawford read as she closed the old and tarnished mythological book, sending a puff of dust as the pages collided. Her mind had gone astray after borrowing too many romance novels from the town's library, for too many months. This forgotten treasure was abandoned, collecting dust on the topmost shelf as the steamy romance manuals eclipsed it for who knows how many years.

The librarian lady with a stereotypical messy bun, wearing an oversized sweater and prescription glasses, looked at Lisa in silent shock. More accurately, she was looking at the book Lisa was just about to check out.

"Is everything okay?" Lisa asked, wondering whether the change in her reading choice was too meteoric this month, with this giant in her hands. The librarian was doomed to remembering her name, face and her favorite genres, since she was the most regular, almost full-time reader in the library. Other seventeen year-olds in their small town of Everburn seemed to have been engrossed by different things, far from this modest reading shelter.

"Uhh – no – uhh," the librarian stuttered, fixating her eyes on the notes piled all over the register, "it's just – astonishing that those legends were last checked out in 1977."

Lisa's eyes widened, but judging by the condition the book was in, it was not much of a surprise.

"That's... a lot of time." Lisa commented, placing the book gently on the table so that she would not pour the powdery dust all over the register counter.

"Nice perfume, by the way," the librarian added with an innocent smile, as she bent over the counter and wrote the new date, "it's going to stick around for a while."

Lisa smiled politely as the dimples on her cheeks showed under the dim library light. "Thanks."

She left the library and walked out into the pouring rain.

The library wrapped in the evening silence and tranquil, with the only disturbance being the muffled sounds of the librarian's breathing and the occasional buzzing of the lightbulbs.

One hour later, a stranger walked in. The librarian startled at the chime of the bells, dangling at the top of the entrance door. The unfamiliar, but mesmerizing silver eyes captured the attention of the diligent librarian. She watched the wild curls of his dark hair, soaked with the droplets of rain, cover the thick eyebrows as he approached her messy desk. She immediately noticed a few scars on his neck, decorating his fair skin under the black T-shirt. He seemed strong and vigorous with the protruding veins on his arms.

"How may I help you?" The librarian asked as she jumped from her seat, meeting the silver eyes of only a discernible teenager.

He remained silent for a few seconds, scanning the library with a melancholy in his eyes. The librarian waited, grasping the edge of the desk for balance.

"Do you have...,?" The silver eyes stopped on the book that Lisa Crawford checked out an hour ago – The Lycanthropic Legends of Everburn, "I'll take that one."

Suddenly, not bothering to ask for the librarian's permission, he grabbed the book from the desk and traced his fingers along its ragged, ancient surface. He seemed fascinated by how old the book appeared – as anyone else would be. Old books carried with them some kind of a time-worn magic, bewitching the eyes of the beholder.

But this time, what the librarian was not aware of, the fascination was not purely about the book.

A wild, mysterious scent, replaying the pictures of exotic places he had never visited and rewinding memories he had never experienced, entered his nostrils. Whoever's hands touched this book not long ago, left an inexplicable scent that he would remember for a lifetime.

As if imprinting on it, he borrowed the book for a month. He was determined to memorize and find the source of that scent, no matter what.

He walked out into the pouring rain with the book sheltered mindfully under his armpit, leaving behind the recurrent chime of the bells and a bewildered librarian.

- - -

Thank you for giving this story a chance! I hope you enjoy it ♥

© 2020 Sabrina Pearce. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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