☙ the shadow-grin ❧

He hears the howl, the song of Fenrir on the wind like a ghost of fog creeping up from a great crevasse. Then, like the tinkling sound that only could be the voice of true light of Mother Moon, Natu sings her song beside her mate’s, husbands, the life-bond that should never have been possible and was therefore nothing short of a miracle. He listens to them, writes them on his heart, because he knows - as he has always known - he will outlive all his brothers this night. He, him with broken body and a lost calling. He would survive and be the last to know and teach the songs to Medea, to Constantine, to Taliesin - if the boy would ever be able to harbor kindness for the tightest kindred that Fenrir had known. Neirin had been his leader, Ifrit his charge -- but Seamus had been the brother of his soul like the other two at arms could not have been.

He hears the last note cease and he rises, loping with that tell-tale limp that he bore since he saved the children by taking the first blow of the bear who had come to rid the world of the legacy of their genes. He knows that he must find the final resting place of his brother - must find it and sing a third song to Mother Moon. Alexander would be the only to know that the songs had been the swan song of his parents -- that the third song was a eulogy left only to the believers of Nanruan faith. To all else, the songs would have been merely songs of comfort, of joy, of reminiscing lives that had gone so beautifully tragic and then wholesome again in each other’s embrace.

And when the flurries grow to snow, he knows that Mother Moon is shrouding the two who have passed, finding them as he expected and no less than they deserved.

Natu’s white seems to pale the fallen snow that sparkles in the moonlight like stardust, and Fenrir, he seems as black as the night and so much in contrast to his mate who followed him even unto death. The clouds breaking reveal a bloody red moon, washed this color, no doubt, by the many lives taken by Fenrir in battle - most especially the Bears who had sought to overthrow the wolves of his and Fenrir’s adopted home. It is eerie, but it is beautiful… even if, as he turns, the red of that moon is growing more and more the pure white of Mother Moon’s true beauty.

He turns, then, and travels not far to where Alexander sleeps, waking all the children and sending the three other brothers to seek out the rest of the progeny that had come to this merry vacation -- that had come to the final pages of their parents beloved lives. They would not be too far behind Alexander and the daughters who now groggily stir from their elder brother’s side.

Then down they go, into the midst of this singularly sacred clearing. Quiet, even down to the youngest and most vibrant of the three sisters. “Mother Moon has weeped for them, Alexander, you may begin the song to escort their souls to your uncles, to their loved ones.”

And he does, the poor lad, stoic and strong as his father had bade him be should he ever fall. That leadership that Natu so approved of stamped down by his grief and his duty to his father. No wailing comes from him, not even a sob like there were from the two elder girls of Natu and Fenrir’s last litter.

Tiamat, bolder than the other two, leads the sisters forward. She lays where her father’s nose might touch her own from over her mother’s neck. Feather, once drawn so close to Samia, now nestles against the cheek of her virgin-white mother, pitifully wishing for those blue eyes of her mother to open, to mirror her own as they had always done before. Medea, ever her father’s solace, sat and leaned in where she might offer a sad and soft tone to the song of her brother, having always sung her father to sleep when it did not take her first.

And Alexander’s song rises higher, deeper, softer, fuller - all at once. Seamus matches it, the young girls doing what they can in the choked lamentations of orphans who yet knew they were not alone. Bahamut and Jaye, Seamus knew, would have been proud of their grandchildren -- and Bahamut most of all of his grandson. The new bastion of his father’s lifestyle.