Polyamory Fantasy: When Elijah Knocks, Scene 4

“I am . . . I was a warrior of the People of the Flint.” Again there was that strangeness of his words not matching up. It was kind of getting annoying. “Are you the reason I woke? What have you done to me?” he demanded.

Dakota stepped back towards the trees, instinctively seeking camouflage from a threat. “I don't know anything about you, and you are in my turf. Either start talking sense or get the hell out of here.”

The last thing she expected was for him to start laughing.

“Make sense? Nothing is sense, everything is mad. I was sent to sleep a madman, and cursed, and wake to find my tongue and ears are mad, speaking words I do not know, and understanding you, who speaks no tongue I have ever heard. This cave is like nothing I have ever seen, and you surely are a spirit, for you are surely none of the People of the Longhouse, nor any other tribe I have ever heard of.”

She was surprised to see, even as he laughed, tears rolling down his cheeks. And she remembered a morning, ten years gone, when she woke up, surrounded by strangers, to find her whole world destroyed. Maybe his words didn't make much sense, but she understood him anyway.

Girl this is just plain stupid, and you know it. High-tail it out of here and let's get some breakfast.

She ignored the voice of caution, listened instead to the instinct of the wolf. Strange smell, truth smell, pain smell. Honest and broken man. Like we were. Good man.

“I've got some food a short walk from here.” She couldn't help smirking as he stopped laughing to stare at her. “Come on, you look like you could use a meal or three.”

Polyamory Fantasy: When Elijah Knocks, Scene 3

As Dakota was passing by the old mine, she caught a scent. Slowing her run, she cast about, searching the wind for details it could give her. What was a man doing hanging about an abandoned coal mine? Something he didn’t like – he stunk of fear.

She shook her head, telling herself that it was none of her business. Plus, she was out in the woods to get away from humans. Yet even as she started to turn away, something drew her back.

'kota girl, you know you always get in trouble running the woods at night. Hell, isn't that how you got into this mess?

She told herself to shut up, and started creeping through the trees towards the mine.

The wood here was second growth forest, full of low growing bushes, saplings and vines. It provided perfect cover, in an area that was practically her own backyard. As long as she was careful, she would see the man long before he saw her.

The closer she got, the more curious she was. Man, but like no man she had ever scented. There was something very different about him. More than that, she couldn't tell. The fear sweat was good at overwhelming more subtle scents. And even after 10 years a wolf, she was still learning.

She ducked under a low hanging branch, and crouched down. The branch practically touched the ground, and she loosened her jaw in a wolf-grin as she crept into the hide-out it created. Peering through the leaves she could see the man clearly.

Her jaw literally hit the ground. He stood in front of the mine, the few stars illuminating him clearly to her night friendly eyes. Naked from head to toe, except for some kind of loincloth or breechclout or whatever those things were called, head shaved except for a two inch tall Mohawk, and while she couldn't see color very well, she would have bet anything his skin was a perfect bronze.

All-in-all, he looked like he just walked off of the set of The Last Mohican, or something like that.

He also looked absolutely delicious . . .

Shaking her head, she pushed away the thought. It had been . . . far, far too long, but not matter how lickable this guy was, there were more important issues at the moment. Like what the hell was he doing way out here dressed in the next best thing to nothing.

She whined softly to herself, the human wanted to back away and disappear. She'd learned early not to mix in with stuff that wasn't her business. The wolf though . . . the wolf saw a stranger in her territory . . . After a few minutes, she compromised with herself.

Backing out from under the tree branch, she stretched and twisted until she stood once again on two legs. The magic of the change re-creating her clothing, and returning her hair to dozens of thin braids swirling around her shoulders.

As his fear faded, memories forced their way into his consciousness again. He forced them away. The villages were gone. The dead were dead. Never again would he be welcomed among the councils of the Kahnyen'kehàka. Never again hunt with his brothers or court a woman in the firelight.

His thoughts distracted him, and he didn't notice the stranger as she stepped out of the trees. When he looked up, she was halfway across the clearing.

Her clothing struck him first - leggings that were sewn together, with no breechclout. And made of no skin he knew of. And an . . . overdress that ended above her hips, with sleeves that barely covered her shoulders.

He pulled his gaze away from her clothes to look at her face. In the dark it was hard to see her clearly. Unlike the bright colors of her clothes, her skin was dark and faded into the night.

"Hello there."

Her words were strange, but he understood them. An informal greeting he had never heard before. The reply courtesy brought to his lips was another reminder of his shame.

"She:kon Sewakwe:kon, Skennenko:wa ken?"

Once again, present strangeness drove away pain from the past - as he spoke, the words twisted in his mouth, becoming strange to his ears, "I greet you and hope that you walk in the Great Peace."

Dakota stopped a few yards away from the stranger, there was definitely something strange about him. His words didn't line up with his mouth. Almost like the voice overs on old Bruce Lee movies. Never mind that she hadn't ever heard anyone talk that kind of formal except in bad fantasy novels and movies with knights and ladies.

"What are you?" she heard herself ask.

Polyamory Fantasy: When Elijah Knocks, Scene 2

Deep beneath the earth, where miners stained black with the work of their hands had once bartered their lives for anthracite rock, all was silence, and had been for over a century. Unknown to the miners, their picks and hammers had stopped centimeters away from a bubble in the rock. Who knows what would have happened if they had broken through that thin shell. Certainly this tale would have a very different beginning - and ending.

But the coal stopped, and so the picks stopped as well, and the mine had closed. It sat, empty and forgotten, until one day the silence was broken.

Deep beneath the earth, a heart began to beat.

He woke to darkness. The only sound he heard was his own breathing, harsh in his ears. His hands curled, and he felt stone beneath his fingers.

For a brief moment, he remembered nothing. Not his name, or where he was or how he got there. Then a voice floated through his memory:

You will sleep. You will pass the centuries in nothingness. And when the spirits will it, the time will come: Your salvation. Your redemption. Your damnation.

Memory battered his mind, and with it, horror. Screams echoed in his ears. He saw flames shooting into the night sky. The dead scattered about his feet. And blood. The taste of blood filled his mouth.

He screamed, and bolted upright. His hands reached up to cover his face, trying to block images that existed in his mind. Unable to bear the horror he tried to run, only to be stopped by the rock of his cage. Fear turned to anger, to rage. He beat against the wall, pounding the rock until his hands ran with blood.

Was it dumb luck, that his blows landed on that thin shell of rock between his cage and the old mine? Did his spirits guide him? Did fate or destiny take a hand? Perhaps only the stone itself knows the answer.

Whatever the cause, he loosed his fury on the weakest part of the wall. For minutes, maybe hours, he beat against it. Horror, rage, grief, fear, despair - all poured out and assaulted a thin skin of stone that had already been weakened by picks and hammers. The rock cracked, and broke. Slowly, pieces broke away, scattered across the cave floor.

He felt the rock give way beneath his fists, and froze. Listened. Then, he began tearing at the hole, pulling it wider. He strained his eyes to see something - anything. On the other side of the wall was the same utter blackness he awoke to, but something whispered in his mind that this was the way out. The way to freedom, and his destiny.

After a timeless time, he saw the first hint of light. Too dark to be called a shadow, he could see the outline of his hand in front of his face. Even with only touch to guide him, the cave was strange. There was a track of some sort - old and worn but still clear under his fingers, through the center of the cave. And there were places on the walls that felt like tool marks. But why would anyone seek to knap a cave? Shaping an ax head or spear point was one thing - but a whole cave? In several places he felt wooden poles set against the walls. . .

The strangeness of it distracted him from the horrors in his memories; and the track and tool marks told him that people had once walked this cave. He had been certain he would find a way out. Still, when he held up his hand and saw that faint outline he nearly wept.

A few minutes further on, and he saw the outline of the cave entrance. He hurried forward, eager - desperate - to smell open air, to taste green life on the winds.

He froze as he came to the lip of the cave, looking out over a wood at night. An owl ghosted across his view, something held firmly in its talons. For a moment, he felt like the owl's dinner. His past, with his horrors, had led him here. Somehow, he could not believe that what waited would be any less horrifying.

Polyamory Fantasy, Scene 1

Dakota ran the woods alone. The leaf litter cushioned her paws, muffling their sound. The trees loomed around her, blocking out the starlight high above. She leapt downed trees and gullies awash with the day’s rain, heedless of the risk.

She crossed the track of countless deer, and startled an owl from its meal. These mountains came alive at night, in ways that she never would have imagined a decade ago. And yet even the very first time she had walked through them, she felt that she belonged.

Ten years ago she awoke in Central Park and started a new life. A great deal had changed since than; but the woods at night were still the closest thing to home she had. Especially since the pack died.

Usually she pushed the memories away. Told herself Get a grip and get on with life. Tonight, for some reason she wallowed in it.

She spat hair and blood out of her mouth, and fought down nausea. She refused to look at the body slowly turning human at her feet. The battle raged around her, but in the dark neither side noticed her.

In the two years she'd run with the Central Park pack, she'd never seen anything like this. Their attackers had managed to ambush them on home ground. Another pack, trying to take territory. In the moon light, it looked like the stories that Elias had once told her of elves fighting a war in the Park.

Bile choked her as she remembered seeing Elias' throat torn out a minute earlier.
Ma Parker was fighting off three, a man and two wolves, but her heaving flank was blood stained and her movements slowing. Throughout the woods she could hear other battles, and she knew the pack was losing. They were dying.

She wanted to rush in, to save Ma Parker, avenge Elias, but it had only been dumb luck and black fur which disappeared in the dark that allowed her kill her own attacker. Half trained as she was, she'd only get herself killed too.

And than she knew what she could do. Knew what she would do. Knew the pack would never forgive her, and didn't care.

She turned and raced through the night, with fear and desperation giving her feet wings. As she ran she changed, shifting from four legs to two.

Breaking every rule of the pack, she ran to the last phone booth in Central Park and grabbed the handset. Her hands fumbled, but she managed to dial: 9-1-1.

She counted her breathing, waiting for an operator to answer. Friday night in New York, 9-1-1 was always busy, but every moment was that much less time, that much less chance, the pack had.

Finally someone answered, "Hello, please state your name, and the nature of your emergency."
"Oh my God! Thank you! There's a gang fight in the park, by the 52nd street entrance. You have to get someone out here, right now!"

The conversation became a blur after that - the operator wanted more information, but Dakota couldn't risk giving her name, or the names of the pack. Finally, after far too long, she heard sirens coming.

But it had been too late. The pack was dead.

She had to get out of the city than, the new pack would count bodies and know that they had missed someone. They would hunt her down.

The pack had an emergency cache of money and prepaid credit cards. She emptied it. Picked up some sturdy shoes and a good backpack, and left the city before the invading pack came looking for her. . .

A rock slipped under her paw. She fell heavily. Snapped out of memories, she stood, and shook herself off. Luckily, she wasn't hurt.

The run wasn't helping tonight; time to head back to the den.