Once upon a Dawn

Shadowdeep. Hear how the word seems to ring in your ear. Shadowdeep. A word of mystery and great aura. Shadowdeep. The land of ancient magic. Shadowdeep. Where everything originates and ends. Shadowdeep. The realm of the Great Wolves.

A flighty howl breaks the silence, scattering it like one would scatter cobwebs with a broom. A covey of pigeons took to the air, disturbing the night threads even further with their noisy wing beats. Wake up! Wake up! Listen to the cries of our Brothers!

The Shadowdeep hears and turns its attention to the baying. Heads pause and turn towards the sound, ears twitch and quiver. Bodies tense, flex, relax. The Great Wolves are calling. Listen! Listen! Cloven hooves scratch at the damp loam; a flash of black and white fur scampers through the bush. They hear, they listen.

Another howl, deeper and more solemn than the first echoes forth. Questioning. The scouts are returning from their pre-dawn hunt. Why is Little Grayling calling? A short howl in reply. I’m coming! Loam scatters as the yearling makes his way to the Three. A bark, a scuffle, a sniff, and tail-wagging for all. Grayling greets Mousepelt with a gently bite on his chin, the proper way to show respect to your elders. Mousepelt’s tail lifts higher in response. The other two crowd around nosing and pawing affectionately at the young one.

It takes several minutes, but at last Little Grayling answers all of their questions. Ah! Blackmother has had her pups? How many? Three? No, four. Girlpup looks like her father. Moondance is very proud. Blackmother? Great excitement. Happy, happy.

The four pause. Little Grayling play-bows and Hartpaw accepts with a wild pounce. They fight, claw, yap, and bite. It is all in good fun. Pups only come once a year and they are always a cause to celebrate. Mousepelt and Windhowl sit by and watch, wolf grinning. They are much too dignified to join the revelry now.

Minutes pass before Hartpaw breaks away. Her playmate comes bounding after her, only to receive a flash of teeth. No more playing, Hartpaw says with her ears. Grayling’s tail flashes an apology and he is rewarded with a grin.

Come, let us find her. Maybe Moondance will let us see them? But that is for Blackmother to decide. The four made their way back to the earthen den, tails wagging, voices singing with contented yaps and whimpers.

And the moon sets below the horizon to allow its brother, the sun, to reign. Pink and orange highlight the sky to the east, painting the clouds vibrant colors of the dawn. In the wolven lore, dawn was when all the magics reach their summit of power. Pups born at the sun’s rising were said to gain much of this power…and become as mighty as the sky spirits themselves.

Shadowdeep. The land of the Cannai wolf pack, the Great Wolves.

The Shadowdeep was a land of giants. Where everything was bigger than it should be. Mosses rose like thick carpet, a foot thick. Mushrooms towered higher than that, their white caps reaching over four feet in height. And the trees! The trees were the very essence of the Shadowdeep. Their trunks, a score of wolves around, twisted and spiraled upwards heaven bound. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet above the ground, their great, spreading canopies formed. The animals themselves were giants.

Great stags reached heights of seven feet at the shoulder. The crests of their antlers rose even higher than that. The smallest birds were the size of our own eagles and an insect would be considered tiny if it wasn’t bigger than a man’s head.

It was a land of eternal mists and a thousand lakes. A land of a thousand high mountains and their deep, winter snows. A land of a deep and ancient magic; the magic of life, birth, and death.

This was Shadowdeep.

Three moons had passed since that day. The pups have grown rapidly since then. Their eyes have opened and changed color. Their bodies have begun to develop into the bodies of adolescent wolves, though they still had to fit into their overly large ears and paws before then.

There is an excitement in the forest this morning. Today is the day that the pups will be given their names and officially join the pack. The Shadowdeep is on fire with the chorus of elated howls. One can feel the excitement in the air. It is magical.

The pack gathered outside of the whelping den, a mass of wriggling bodies and twitching ears. Moondance had to silence Little Grayling twice before the wolf, not much more than a pup himself, would calm down to a more reasonable level. Windhowl had taken her place beside the alpha as beta. Mousepelt and Hartpaw sat across from them; the latter keeping a firm paw down on Grayling’s overly excited tail.

At long last, Blackmother emerges from the cave with four little pups at her heels. They bounce after each other, each varying shades of gray. Blackmother gives them a little whine and sits down beside Windhowl. With a little help from Hartpaw, the children also sit down at the entrance of the den.

Moondance rises, and, with a calm glance, signals Mousepelt the Elder to join him. Together, the two pad to the pups. Moondance lowers his head and sniffs at the first pup’s fur. Pointed ears swivel forward as the pup nudges at his father’s muzzle. The alpha’s tail shoots up behind him and waves. Leafchase.

Mousepelt’s head rears back and his maw opens in a jubilant howl. The others add their own voices to the chorus; Leafchase and the other pups sing their own sharp cry with the adults. So much fun!

Moondance moves to the next, and repeats the same process he had used with Leafchase. The name is proclaimed and another howl echoes from the mountains. Snowhowl. The third becomes Owlet, for his fur was soft and ash-gray like the baby owls in the nest.

As Moondance approaches the fourth, the only female in the group, Mousepelt leans closer. Magic eyes, the Elder whispered with his posture. Look closely. Moondance did and recoils suddenly. Magic eyes. The words seem to spread through the pack as soon as they are spoken. Magic eyes.

Darkmother stands and approaches, concern written across her dark features. The she-pup stares up at her parents, confused. Why were they looking at her like that?

She whimpers, thrusting her nose up to be nuzzled. There is a long pause before Mousepelt takes action and lifts his head. Skylark. This one would be Skylark.

Darkmother howls, long and lilting, for Skylark. The others join, and all becomes well again in the pack. The pups were named.

And as the sun crested the horizon, a blue glint reflected in little Skylark’s eye. A single shard of baby blue that hadn’t been hidden underneath the dark yellow of her irises. Skylark held the magic of the dawn within her.

Several Dawns after the Naming, the Cannai pack left the whelping den to find the spring burrow where the pups would stay and learn to hunt the deer and of the magic of the Shadowdeep and the lore of the animals that dwelt there…

And the magic that possessed Skylark would grow and she would become as mighty as the sky spirits themselves.