stories were often much kinder than reality, there was nothing to doubt about such a clear and honest fact. Even the stories that ended in tragedy, the ones told as fable rather than legend, were kinder than the messy flow of real life. it was his to know such a thing, his to tell even legends so that they were memorable and sing the songs that stemmed from legend in rhyme and verse so that they would catch on the tangles of his listener’s minds.
even alone, separated from his brothers, from his mate and imprint, he sang songs - and that is what he is doing now. voice melodic where his brothers’ own wouldn’t have been able to claim the same. it is not a howl to summon, not a howl to express his loneliness - in it there is a lesson, a story. It is the song of a woman of cream with eyes of the same color in a mountain stream. She is beautiful, she is kind, she is strong of mind and stubborn of jaw. She is alone, but she comes upon four brothers. She travels in ignorance of a pack’s claim on the ground she treads and these four brothers - so dislike in color and nature - are the borderguard of their adopted father.
The notes are distinctive in tone as each brother is described. Where the cream woman’s was done in notes high and almost tinkling, the voice in his throat manipulates them into something far different. Regal, noble, but bright as the noonday sun - the golden brother is given strength and handsomeness in note. Then a brother of black, Seamus’s voice turning ghostly, solemn - for that black brother had ever been so, even in his sparse times of laughter it had always been tempered. Then a deep bellowing howl describes the brother of blood red, murderer and yet brother all the same, powerful and strangely loyal in the face of a great missing hole in his heart that had seemingly been there since birth - a disconnect of himself and those who lived his life with him. And then the brown, and the voice raises up and now it is playful but sly, notes complex when thought on but otherwise carrying a simple tune.
The song is suddenly merry, teasing the black brother for his clear preference for the woman in cream as the red tormented her and the black came to her rescue, much to the amusement of gold and brown. The song rolls their eyes and yet the cream woman looks on in admiration and surprise at her defender. The song tells of the return of the black, proud, and somehow devastatingly in need. Need that draws him to the cream woman and the cream woman to him. They are made for one another and there is a note of rejoicing.
As the notes fade, the story takes a jump in time.
It talks of a sickness, as pale and sickly as the green of the black’s eyes. It talks of stripped souls and split pairs, of how some died from the trauma, of how many were laid low in their loss and the mournful notes are heartbreaking to hear-- but a light rise, and there is hope, a note of the black and cream’s everlasting promise even while they burned and ached as the souls of their land tried to regrow their bonds and the struggle it was to cling to one another so that the chasm of a wound would heal.
And another fade, this time because the illness was followed by fire when the queen of the plateau had sent the brothers and the once king of the spartans to find a healer from a place of gargantuan beasts… and again deep sadness infects the notes. the king of spartans stripped of his mate, and the cream woman believed lost to the brother in black. madness kept them away, a madness in the king of spartans that made the prior madness of the red brother seem minute in comparison.
The song turns to a song of battle, of fighting amongst wolves that grows even more violent as great royal bears became their enemies. bears that grew so large as their humps towered over even elk crowns. bears that slaughtered for the wolf rebellion, and yet for the deaths the notes of the songs depict, short yowls of lives cut short, the brothers remained with their spartan uncle. the brothers grew into mighty generals. they chose women of the locals and were mated to them, though there is an evasive note that said that the mating was not one that the locals had thought, that though there were pups - there was a deeper mating that they did not perform…
And then, again, in the notes of victory, the song is changed. the song is changed to one of great disaster that sent the king of spartans and one son from each brother home. how the four first brothers stayed to avenge the slaying of their enormous pack of locals and gathered strays, of how they became legend for their tooth and claw, their fangs bringing low the king of bears, named for a great demon in their lore. How it took them years to end the war and to balm the civil unrest that stemmed from so many alpha’s and leaders lost since their beginning of the war with the bears.
The notes of the song, of the great story meant for the ears of one, but welcoming of all who would hear, changes to a story of victory over all strife and a homecoming.
A homecoming that was suddenly more lonely than their souls could bear. Their home had changed, though home it was. Their very birthrights stripped from the earth they had once claimed as bachelor males. The song tells of the black’s reluctance to come, of how the brothers voted and despite their pity of the black male who had been so wounded by this world they were to return to - they would not be kept from learning of their children’s fate.
The song found the whiter-than-snow son of the brown dead in defense of his lady-love, his unrequited soulmate. It found the son of the blood red brother gone to some great journey to another world entirely. it found the son of the black risen to king and that of the golden one become his closest confidante.
But the notes grow into a crescendo - for their surrogate father had found his mate upon his return and then, up an octave, there she was. The cream lady who had been the dearest lost to them all. The cream lady whose eyes sparkled like the brightest of tropical fish or gemstone with light shon through it.
It was a song of relief and rejoining, of wholeness in the black brother’s soul. It was suddenly a song of how souls might be mended, of how they came together like the moon finally catching the sun and the universe began--- and that universe was in the form of a golden brown baby boy whose fur was rich and who was healthy as any parent could call for…
But here, the song changes it’s tune. There is a anxiety, and anxiousness, in the brother of black, a pressing insistence in the cream lady and a curiosity that would not abate. There was a struggle of wills, but at the urging of brother and soulmate alike, the black brother’s notes fade. The song instead tells of a great journey, as if to a home that was note precisely a home. The cream lady learning of great deeds and loving the black brother more for his courage, becoming a fifth heart beating amongst the four as there had never been before. It was a bond ---
And then horror, horror in the notes like there would never been in a song that was sung by this storyteller again. Horror because there is an ambush, former allies found dead and left to rot in the forest outside of the place the brother’s had once been heroes in and generals of beneath their father, the spartan king. the notes speak of battles, fighting, but the cream lady bid to run - to flee and her defiance against doing so. the defiance against any such piteous thing when she had become the fifth of their number. And then, the loss… the loss… oh, how it echoed in the voice of the bard. how it became a desperate despair amongst the company of brothers who had not wished their time with their impromptu sister ended in such a vile place.
The song began to slow, pink eyes closing as seamus brought the brothers home once more after a great deal of mindless wandering, trying to distract the hollow black brother. trying to make the male forget the emptiness that then became impossible. impossible for the noble golden, bloody red, or slippery brown. But soon the brother’s gave up on healing the unhealable and the sing song nature of the song is almost disdainfully teasing, bringing the brothers back to the place they never should have encouraged leaving - even for the sake of the cream woman. A return that meant the black brother evading even the whisper of his son, shame and intelligent understanding of the likelihood his son would not wish to see him keeping him from mountain peaks that made the song rise and fall with stronger notes than even the red brother’s own descriptive sound.
---- then the song ceases, for he did not dare tread past that point in the story, dared not remind the intended listener how there was healing won by one Natu in the black brother’s heart… nor how that white, not creamy, lady had become the life-bond mate of that same brother. He dared not sing of how the rich coated son and the black brother had met, how the black brother had left with a second hole in his heart even the white lady could not fill. How, even righteously, that rich coated son had turned the black brother from his explanation and how the brown brother had taken it upon himself to tell what the black brother would not be so bold as to do.
His brown form lay at the border of spirane with his head on his paws then, waiting to see if his tale might bring to him his adopted nephew, the son who had a calling far more like his uncle than his father. .
SEAMUS
the shadow-grin ; of ferrine
male | 17 years | 33 inches | 130 pounds
bard of the fantastic four | imprint of alice
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