The Cousin of Death

It has to hurt, a voice whispered.

She drew a deep breath. The scent of fresh rain felt as pungent as mint.

When Velyre opened her eyes, she was alone.

She stood up in the shadow of a tall, straight stone, her legs a little unsteady. Four legs. She looked back: a body covered in pale fur, ghostly in the gloom. But she was no ghost, for she felt pain in her head, her paws. She lifted one: there was a deep scratch on the underside.

She instinctively licked her nose. Dried blood.

The urge to panic filled her. It has to hurt, she told herself. She looked back at the grave behind her. The markings on its surface meant nothing to her.

Her head hurt so, so much. She stepped a few paces away and leaned against a cold stone wall.

---

She opened her eyes again. A growing hunger gnawed at her belly, but the pain in her skull had lessened.

Velyre did not know where she was going. She focused on taking one step at a time, her injured paw held off the ground. Water, she decided. She needed water.

She passed among the looming shapes of tombstones. To the buried she spared no pity: they had it easy.

“You could at least try to help,” Velyre growled at a grave marked with ominous engravings of skulls. “Why am I always the only one awake?”

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

She walked directly into a stone in her shock.

It took her a moment to realize that no, the dead buried under her paws had not spoken. The words had come from someone standing nearby. A four-limbed figure—a wolf. She gaped.

Then she shut her mouth. Velyre was not accustomed to hearing wolves speak, but this at least seemed more reasonable compared to a reanimated skeleton. Considering she was now also a…wolf, she assumed.

She tried to reach for the darkness again. There was nothing there but her own thoughts.

Wincing, she stumbled back from the stiff gray stone, and unconsciously sank into a submissive crouch. She felt the strange urge to make herself look smaller, less threatening. Weird. She’d spent most of her life trying to do the opposite.

Vel collected herself as much as she could. She took a steadying breath.

“Are you a witch?” Velyre asked. She looked closely at the other wolf, but she felt no flicker of recognition. She was not the entity that had brought her here; Velyre would have recognized that presence, she thought.

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

So she was the witch’s wife. She denied her own power, but she spoke like a dealer of magic and spells herself.

Witches could not be trusted. Some were more benevolent than others, but there was always a price to be paid. Nothing was ever given for free. She would know.

Vel watched her, stricken. Her first instinct was to snarl and say she needed nothing. She still wanted to scream. But she couldn’t. She clamped her jaws shut, mouth a tight line. And then, suddenly, the tension in her shoulders slackened. She stood up straight, though her head and tail were still low.

“That depends on what you want in return,” Vel said with more calm than she felt.

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

Return whatever you take. Velyre tilted her head in mild surprise. No matter how she turned the words over, she could find nothing objectionable. A fair bargain. Fairness was a difficult quality to find, in life and in others. She relaxed the slightest bit.

What did she need? To know if my friend’s alive. To know what I did was worth it.

What Vel said instead was: “Somewhere to sleep that isn’t full of dead people.”

Elegant as ever.

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

What little composure she had slipped. She didn’t realize it, but she looked a bit like a child herself just then. Wide-eyed, high-strung, yet with a touch of something she hadn’t felt for a long time.

Hope.

Not entirely trusting herself to speak, she nodded first.

“I’ll return what I take,” Vel promised. She might be powerless now, but she could do that much.

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

Velyre hesitated—more from stunned relief than anything else. But it was only for a moment. She stumbled a bit at first as she made her numb, unfamiliar paws move. Holding the injured one close to her body, she limped after the she-wolf—whose name she still did not know. If she cared to be known by a name, that was.

“I study herbs,” Velyre responded automatically. Would this world even have the plants she recognized? “I like to know how they affect…us.”

Mainly others, actually. Vel had enough self-preservation not to test things on herself. Though, it wasn’t as if she was going to be brewing any potions with these clunky paws.

“My name is Velyre,” she added after a brief pause. “I’m a…scholar. Learner.”

Or more crudely: witch.

the staff team luvs u

This content is not visible to non-members.

the staff team luvs u

Captain Wake. And Esmerelda—her first mate, it seemed. Quite literally.

Velyre looked at the grey-furred woman with her grinning muzzle, the smell of salt and pinewood heavy in her coat. Other scents mingled with hers—though it would be some time before Velyre would learn to pick them out with the new nose she had been granted.

Vel had never been to sea herself. Still, she had grown up with stories of battles between ships with tall wooden masts, of cannon-fire and ill-begotten treasure. Wolves did not sail, yet Velyre recognized a captain and her crew all the same. She did not know her well, and she had yet to meet the Mystic, the Saltwoods’ dealer of spells and bargains. But from what she did know, Wake seemed just the sort of captain a cabin-boy could hope for. Cabin-girl. Cabin-wolf.

She did not know how to express that, so Vel only offered her own smile in return—tentative, small, and brief. A rare event for Velyre, though her new captain couldn’t know that yet.

The muscles in her face felt strange, even if the motion was familiar. This was going to take some getting used to. Especially the fishing and swimming part.

At Wake’s questioning, Vel looked down at her paw again, nosing at the scratch. Her vision was not as sharp as it had been before—but she was startled to discover what she knew just from the smell, a mix of earth and dried blood.

“It’s superficial,” Velyre answered. Painful, but far from the worst pain she’d ever experienced. “I need to clean it. It should heal well, as long as I don’t go trodding through horse-shit.”

She shut her jaws instinctively, though it occurred to Velyre that a sailor probably wouldn’t mind such crass language.

the staff team luvs u