Who are you?

• Reflection

• Insight

Who do you know?

• Family

• Others

Where are you going?

• Hooks

• Skills

What have you done?

• Then

• Now

What else is there?

• Art

• OOC

Reflection

MONIKERS: Wil; Willy; William; Runt; Tonn; Luag; Crow; Wilding; Fen; Wiltonn
APPARENT AGE: Early 20s RACE: Reachman GENDER: Male
HAIR: Black EYES: Pale Blue SKIN: Pale

If not for the pale blue tattoos etched along his face, the young man would be easy to forget: he is neither remarkably tall nor short and though his physique is that of a man who has spent the majority of his life doing hard, manual labor, he isn't excessively built. He keeps his hair cut close to the scalp, minimizing upkeep it would require otherwise. A shadow of a beard is maintained, meticulously groomed, and never allowed to overgrow. His attire depends on his location: heavy furs and leathers while traversing Skyrim and The Reach, and a more Imperial-styled breastplate and armor while working within Cyrodiil.Though his tattoos are extensive, traversing most of his body, his usual style of dress tends to hide the majority of them, often leaving only the markings on his face and hands or arms visible. They're ritualistic in design, snaking their way from his ankles to the backs of his hands and up along his throat. The jagged, interlocking patterns culminate into the eerie, monstrous shape of a horned canid skull in the center of his chest. The color is a strange one for tattoos, a blanched shade of light blue that still manages to stand out strikingly against his pale skin.The only real remarkable item he tends to carry with him is a grotesque staff that remains housed in a sort of makeshift sling at his back. It's a primitive-looking thing with a shaft made of a dark, twisted wood resembling a dead tree branch. Atop it sits an atrocious skull that, at first glance, appears to be bovine in nature... but the teeth are a little too sharp and the horns a little too obscure, making it impossible to tell just what sort of beast it originated from. The staff smells of damp earth and rotting leaves, the scent of a thickly forested floor after heavy rainfall.

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Insight

"Unassuming" is a good word to describe the young man's demeanor: he is even-toned, collected, and generally subservient to those he considers his superiors. Having spent the first decade of his life in The Reach and the subsequent years secluded aboard ships, he lacks a lot of common knowledge (and common sense) when it comes to dealing with other people. This can become painfully evident after only a short conversation with him as his responses can be curt with little regard or forethought of how his words might impact (or anger) someone else. Making matters worse, he is incredibly literal-minded and one can almost hear the "whooshing" sound of jokes going over his head whenever an attempt is made.Though he tends to favor kindness over cruelty, displays of violence or other atrocities appear to have little impact on him if they're perpetrated by those he follows. He is quick to brush these deeds off as unavoidable aspects of life that simply must be accepted and he doesn't balk at taking part in ruthless or sadistic tasks if they are demanded of him.While he can be standoffish and stoic towards those he doesn't trust, his general nature is relatively friendly and inquisitive. He displays frequent moments of naivety and curiosity or excitement indicative of both his previously sequestered lifestyle and his youth. That curiosity can often border on being obsessive or intrusive and he doesn't always realize when he should stop prying. On the bright side, he has an aversion towards angering people and is quick to apologize, sometimes repeatedly... assuming his opinion of the person is positive. Towards those he harbors mistrust or dislike for, he can be cold and frustratingly stubborn, refusing to be swayed from a task or objective or opinion, even in the face of bribery or threats. To those who have garnered his trust, however, he is incredibly eager to please and can usually be coaxed into doing things he would otherwise disagree with. He is loyal to a fault in this way, frequently remaining dutiful to individuals he feels indebted to, even if they may be blatantly taking advantage of him or abandon him entirely.

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Hooks

DISPLACED REACHMAN Away from his homeland and culture for so long, he's become almost relentlessly curious about other Reachfolk, who he can be keen on interacting with and questioning.NAIVE Being so quick to trust and befriend anyone who seems kind on the surface makes him an easy target for scapegoating, conning or thievery.HEDGE MAGIC There is something decidedly wild and off about his magic. A single display of it can make it evident that it's nothing like the magic one would learn in a traditional, structured environment.SKINWALKER The ability to influence the behavior of animals and even control them makes him uniquely suited for handling and training beasts. It can also be employed to, under the right conditions and with mixed success, sift through the memories and thoughts of people.FORMER PIRATE Seven years serving Captain Sivier left him with an extensive history of pirating from a rather young age. Past conflicts reemerging or previous victims cropping up is always a possibility.

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Skills

Still quite young, Wil has a relatively limited skillset with a lot of potential for growth and learning. Being naturally inquisitive and prone to wanting to help, it would be a simple feat to draw his curiosity with something new or coax his assistance with a skill he's already learned.

MAGICAL PROWESS Wil's specific type of magic is one he refers to as 'skinwalking', which involves the use and manipulation of living things. It can best be described as empathetic: to fully skinwalk requires the ability to slip into the mindset of another and adopt the way they see the world before influencing their behavior, thoughts, or actions. This magic requires channeling, leaving him vulnerable and completely unaware of his own surroundings. There's a sense that he connects to whatever he is shaping or controlling at the time as if it weren't merely a tool but an extension of himself and his consciousness. This is shown best when he skinwalks plants, which undoubtedly lack any sort of sentience or thought process: there is no mind to meld with and he struggles to explain what it's like. He often defaults to descriptions of sensing and feeling even if whatever he's been controlling wouldn't normally be capable of such.

ANIMAL HANDLING As a direct result of his magic, Wil is capable of handling a variety of animals, both domesticated and wild. The constant skinwalking of different beasts has given him unique insight into the mindset of many animals, making it easier to work with them than it might otherwise be. Even without employing his magic, he finds it easier to tame, train and handle animals -- services he is more than willing to offer to those in need.

PHYSICAL PROWESS Working most of his life aboard ships, often doing manual labor, Wil is in fairly robust shape. Lacking any formal training with weapons beyond the basics he had been taught (and has mostly forgotten) from his youth, however, limits how well he can take advantage of this. Though he's started to try his hand at archery again, a skill he'd begun to hone as a boy, these lessons usually fall by the wayside as he occupies himself with strengthening and refining his magical abilities instead. His skill with a large sword or ax is almost nonexistent and wielding something simple like a hatchet or a knife is accomplished easily only because of how straightforward it is to use such a weapon.

MARINER With a love for the sea almost unheard of among most Reachmen, the previous decade has bestowed upon him a great deal of understanding and competency in the matters of navigation and charting, maritime strategy, ship maintenance, rigging, weather forecasting, fishing, and, of course, sailing in general.

INFORMATION GATHERING Primarily through the use of his skinwalking, Wil has learned to become an adept scout during his time on land. It's often highly beneficial to be able to take to the skies through the eyes of a hawk or creep into a secured fortress as a furtive rat. Being able to coax forth memories from man and beast alike has also proven useful in gleaning information that might not have otherwise been available.

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Something Wild

Stories of the past...

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Wild Fire

"You should be grateful."His words came slow but certain and even though she had no idea what the rest of that sentiment would be, she already found her jaw clenching in defiant disagreement."You should be grateful," he said with such provoking credence, "that his death will serve a purpose he would never achieve in life."She said nothing to this, and while the shadows flickering across her face from the smoldering fire pit in front of her hid what little expression she was unable to keep in check, he must have sensed her discontent. A silence lapsed between them then; he knew better than to push the subject and she had no intention of dignifying his platitude with any sort of response. He was right, of course; she knew he was right and that may have been the most infuriating thing about it. After some time (though she had no idea how much time) he left her there to brood over the dying fire.When they had first come to her and told her the boy would be sacrificed, she had felt nothing. If anyone had then accused her of not loving him, she wouldn't have hesitated to gut them from gullet to groin. It wasn’t a lack of love that stifled her emotion but a cultural acceptance of this practice. Over the years, she had witnessed and, indeed, taken part in numerous similar events. She couldn’t recall a time she had ever questioned these rituals, not even when she’d been a child herself. This was how things were done. This was how you maintained the strength of the pack, how you culled the weak. A part of her rationalized that this was bound to happen, that she should have seen it coming from the day he was born. The others hadn’t survived, why should he?She'd given birth three times over six years and only the boy had entered the world drawing breath enough to scream. The others had been blue and lifeless, two girls who she had never held nor bothered to name after laying eyes on their still and silent corpses. She wasn't even sure what became of the bodies, though they must have been returned to the earth.The boy had drawn more than breath upon his arrival: he'd drawn blood too, her blood, and they had been convinced that she would trade her life for his (and if she'd been given that choice she thought she would have), but she'd survived. Days later she was coherent and well enough to hold her child, the only one to come to her with life, and she remembered thinking that this was the one, that he would be strong and healthy, that all the pain and loss she'd suffered thus far was all leading up to him.Now they were going to take that away as if none of it mattered. Eight years later and maybe he could have been strong, but the other boy had sicked his bitch on him in some petty prank and the beast had nearly torn his throat out and now he couldn't even work with the dogs. Fear was acceptable, to an extent. it was a healthy instinct that served a purpose of self-preservation... but it had been months since the incident and he still refused to go near the hounds. He was more than afraid, he was paralyzed. This wasn’t acceptable. Hunters didn’t become paralyzed with fright -- prey did.She had tried to explain to him why he couldn't behave this way and he'd been receptive. He’d nodded, he’d agreed, he’d told her he would do better... yet it always ended the same: she would take him to the dogs and he would freeze and pull against her iron-clad grip and beg her not to make him.She would get angry.
He would apologize.
They would leave.Months passed like this and when they approached her with the decision she felt nothing... at first. Even after her initial acceptance, the next feeling wasn’t one of distress or sorrow, but resentment. As much as she loved the boy she hated him too, hated that he was so weak and incapable of overcoming such a simple fear. It made her look weak, too, and she knew that they were all watching her, waiting to see if she would buckle. She had raised him herself, she was at least partially responsible for his deficiency. Maybe he’d gotten it from her.Somewhere along the way her resentment towards the boy began to shift towards the others. It was true that if he couldn’t work with the dogs he served no purpose: the dogs were their life. They hunted with them, worked them, bred them and sold them and traded them. Every aspect of their life revolved around the great beasts, there was no conceivable way the boy could avoid them forever. The proposed solution was not only reasonable… but expected.
And yet…...And yet…They took him each evening and even though she knew they wouldn’t bring him to the altar until the moons were new in the sky, a mounting sense of unrest began to plague her. The date was drawing nearer with the ritualistic glyphs inscribed nightly on his small frame helping to count down the days. Had he cried or complained when they came to take him night after night, she might have stood a chance at hardening her heart against his inevitable death. There was something about the way he went with them, so compliant and quiet and willing, that made it that much worse. When he returned, late into the night but still long before sunrise, he made no mention of what was to come, though she knew that even as young as he was, he wasn't blind to what was happening. He knew he was going to die, but he never said a word. There was only silence between them each night as she slathered a thick salve over the new glyphs they had etched across his body... and something within her began to break.You should be grateful.Grateful for what? That the boy she had brought forth with blood and agony would be stolen from her? That her only surviving child had been deemed unfit for life but somehow worthy to bestow upon The Huntsman? He was only a boy, no great game or worthy prey. It had always made sense in the past, she'd never questioned in the past... but it had never been her son in the past, never her blood.The boy didn't belong to The Huntsman. He didn't belong to them. He was hers, just as she was his. She would have died to give him a chance at life eight years ago, why would she sit by so passively and allow them to steal him away now?The answer to that question occurred to her suddenly then, with a matter-of-fact simplicity that she accepted at once: she wouldn’t.

It was dark inside but it took only moments for her eyes to adjust to the familiar forms within her temporary home. She crossed quickly to the small shape of the boy as he slept fitfully, tangled in a pile of furs.He awoke immediately as her hands grasped his shoulders and he looked up at her owlishly. Her mouth opened, but she found she had no words and she could only stare back down at the boy as he looked to her expectantly. Her hands strayed upward towards his head and she held him like that for a time, cupping each side of his face. Her thumbs passed over the fresh markings they had inflicted upon him only days prior. She rubbed at them, gentle at first, then rougher, as if to try and smear them away like dirt. She applied more pressure, her thumbs pressing forcefully against his cheekbones.It must have been painful but the boy didn’t cry out, nor did he try and pull away from his mother. He lifted his hands and they came to rest at her wrists, though they merely idled there, a gesture of comfort rather than defiance.Staring down at him, she knew then why he never questioned her about the nightly rituals, never pleaded with her to make them stop or to save him from his upcoming inevitable fate: he trusted her implicitly. She was his mother, she knew what was best. His love and dedication to her was unquestioning and a sudden, unexpected surge of guilt hit her. Had she ever deserved such absolute love?When she dropped her hands away she could see, even in the faint light from the dying fire pit outside, where the skin was already beginning to redden on his face. The boy said nothing.She crossed the single room they shared together and departed, wordlessly.

When she returned to him, for one fleeting and terrifying moment, she had thought he had fled. She expected him to be as she'd left him, sitting in his pile of furs and waiting patiently for her return. She knew he must have smelled the smoke in the air and seen the flickering yellow-orange glow of firelight, and her first thought was that it had frightened him into running off or hiding away. This lasted only for a few seconds before her eyes found his shadowy form on the other side of the room where he was busily wrapping salted meat into a thick scrap of oiled leather. She was quick to help him, packing what meager provisions they had available before helping him dress for the inhospitable cold they would be venturing into. With these limited preparations done, she ushered him quickly out the door.The air was cold and dry and the fires had taken hold hungrily, stoked by her anguish and fanned by her fury. The dogs were howling incessantly now and screams filled the night air. The boy froze, but only for a moment. He was quick to turn away, saying nothing, and she could sense his eagerness to abandon this place. Strangely, she found that she was the more hesitant of the two, her eyes sweeping over the carnage she had wrought with sudden uncertainty.Was it worth it?
On the day of his birth, he'd nearly killed her... and now here he was again, taking her life away in an entirely different manner: her home, her security and stability, everything she knew. A staggering pang of regret and anger filled her then, a fury no longer directed at them but at him. Her gaze turned downward to the boy and she found that he was watching her, his eyes the color of a frozen northern lake... the color of her own.She hated him.
...But she loved him.They stole away into the lingering hours of darkness then, leaving fire and smoke and blood in their wake.

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Wild Horses

“It’s easier to skinwalk a broken beast than it is something wild.” Her tone was low, quiet, and her pale eyes remained forward, pinned on the horse as it began to approach them. The boy watched the animal too, listening raptly and nodding as she imparted this wisdom upon him. The horse had noticed their presence only a short time after they had spied it and its approach was swift.“How do you know this one is broken?” She looked to the boy then, her gaze harsh and expectant.There was no response at first, his attention remaining on the lone stallion as it continued ambling towards them. They had never relied on the use of horses before and the sheer size of the docile animal inspired a sense of awe in him, she could tell. “Because… it isn’t afraid of us.”“Fear and caution are not the same,” she reminded him before stepping away from his side. A scarred, calloused hand lifted in offering to the nose of the horse before she trailed the backs of her fingertips along the length of its face in a soothing gesture. She was awarded a soft nickering effort.“A wild horse may be curious of something new in his environment… he may even approach us to investigate. Yet if we came closer, even were we not aggressive, he would retreat. A broken horse sees us and relates us to positive experiences: food, socialization.” She stepped alongside the stallion, moving her hand along its thick neck. “Why is it easier to walk a broken horse than a wild one?”The boy had drawn closer and now he stood in front of the large animal, looking up at it with curiosity and wonder. When it lowered its head to investigate him, his left hand rose to delicately stroke over its long face. “I… don’t know,” he admitted with some reluctance, though his eyes never left the horse.She knew that he expected her to be irritated with his response but her tone remained calm and instructing. “A broken horse -- any broken animal -- has already accepted the influence of man. They rely on people for every day aspects of their lives. They relent easily to the will of a skinwalker because they have already allowed man to control them. It is akin to riding a horse with reins and a saddle in place versus trying to ride one bareback: one is undeniably easier than the other… yet both are possible.”“I understand,” was all he said, finally turning his gaze away from the horse’s dark eyes to look back to the woman.“Good.” She circled back around to stand in front of the stallion, one hand moving to the boy’s chest to encourage him back a few paces. He moved without qualm, standing to the side to watch his mother closely. The hand that had been resting along the horse’s neck moved to its face again, resting gently near the snout as her eyes locked with the stallion’s.“Skinwalking comes down to will. Yours versus theirs. You must understand their will and then impose your own… but be sure you are only imposing, not seizing. If you seize control of the creature’s will you run the risk of maddening it, driving it to fight against you. The goal is to connect, to feel with it…” Slowly, the woman closed her eyes and her hand drifted down along the curve of the stallion’s nose. There was a sense of loss and confusion and she understood that the horse had been separated from his prior handler. This much had already been obvious, given that they had discovered him alone. There was a hopeful eagerness there now, too, anticipation that the appearance of these two people would mean shelter and an abundance of food and a reconnection with the herd. She allowed these sensations to wash over her, accepting them as she weaved her beast magic.There were no words or explicit thoughts to encourage the horse to accept her will; there never was. There were only feelings and a sense of empathy and the manipulation of the animal’s perceptions, an encouragement to do as she bid because surely it would only bring about things the creature already sought. It was a bond, sudden and strong and fierce, and the stallion was abruptly inclined to respond to her as if she’d been his handler his entire life. When her eyes opened and her hand dropped away, she was regarded with dark eyes that showed familiarity and trust from a horse she had encountered for the first time only minutes earlier.She turned to the boy then, grasping beneath his arms and lifting him to sit atop the bare back of the horse. His fingers tangled into the stallion’s mane and though he was uneasy at first to be seated atop the massive creature, he quickly found himself more confident when it remained still and content with its new rider.“You will try next time.” There was a finality to her tone that she knew he wouldn’t argue with as she began to walk, the horse following dutifully alongside her.

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Skinwalker

Stories of the present...

• MORE

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Skinwalker

It was like waking from a dreamless sleep... and yet it was nothing like waking from a dreamless sleep. Awareness had slowly begun to envelop him again, as if he were clawing his way back to consciousness from the depths of some horrifying yet unmemorable slumber... but he wasn't coming to in his tent. A groggy awareness failed to accompany this new state of being, and each time his mind struggled to try and string together any sort of cohesive thoughts they slipped away from him like water through a sieve.The sour taste of alcohol filled his mouth, and this grounded him in some vague, dissonant way: he could draw no memory of drinking, not only just from the prior evening but from any time at all... and yet he knew that he was a drinker. The taste was something familiar, something embedded in his sense of self that it gave him a place to start.He had been drinking, then. Okay. But then what? It was only then, after toiling to form this single, questioning thought of awareness, did he actually realize where he was. It came rushing at him, overwhelming and erratic: sight and sound and feeling that had been, up until that point, eerily absent. His eyes had been open but he hadn't been seeing; his ears had been unobstructed but he hadn't been hearing. All it took was that one coherent question surfacing in his tumultuous mind to snape him back to a sense of being.Before him stood a tree. It was more of a sapling, really, only a few feet high with slender limbs stretching skyward with a longing to become so much more. A stench hung thick in the air, the cloying scent of decay, the tangy, coppery smell of blood. A sense of knowing overcame him and he understood in an instant, even before his eyes registered this truth, that corpses littered the ground around the seemingly innocuous little sapling. The low droning of flies clouding the space around the bodies occurred to him only then, so abrupt and so suddenly loud in his ears.The more aware the man became, the more frightened he did as well. Something was wrong here, and while the idea of standing before a mound of rotting corpses in itself was a terrifying one, what disturbed him the most was his complete and utter lack of understanding of how he had come to be here. Vaguely, as if recalling the memories of someone else, he remembered being at his camp. Yet even this 'memory' brought with it a sense of dread and confusion, as it was not one of his own. He had been at his camp, he knew this: but the images that flashed, fleeting and disconnected through this scrambled mind, were ones of an outsider's perspective. He could see himself moving throughout his small scrap of a camp; he could see himself sprawled out alongside the warm, soft glow of his fire; he could see the glint of the bottle in the low light as it lifted once, twice, three times, countless times, the contents draining throughout the evening. All of this he saw from a distance, through the eyes of another, through the eyes of someone who had been observing him. He saw himself startle, sit up abruptly. He had called something, though this foreign memory was becoming foggy now and the voice was distorted, indecipherable. He had called out, though: someone had been there, he'd seen them or perhaps heard them, and then...And then...?A revolting feeling overtook the man, the invasive and alien feeling of icy fingers groping through his mind. He could feel a pressure building in his head, rapid-fire thoughts that equated to little more than bursts of emotions: Soothing. Safety. Confidence. Reassurance. He was supposed to be here. He belonged here. Then, on the heels of these imposed feelings: No. Danger. Wrong. The sensation of something or someone groping through his mind intensified and he struggled against it, trying to will it away, refusing to so easily be overwhelmed by whatever this frightening force was.All at once he wasn't only seeing the tree in front of him, but he was seeing himself, his silhouette in front of the tree. It was a glimpse through the eyes of another, someone behind him, and it was maddening, it was an impossible sight because he could still see what he was seeing and how could he be seeing something else at the same time, how could he be seeing both through his own eyes and the eyes of another? His mind was so crowded then, intensely overwhelmed with thoughts that weren't his own, impressions that weren't his own, sounds and associations that weren't his own. It all continued to build, a mirror facing a mirror: he saw the tree; he saw himself; he saw himself seeing the tree, he saw the stranger seeing himself seeing the stranger see the tree. And endless cycle, building into a maddening structure of looping sights and sounds.His heart raced, the beat irregular and agonizing as if it were trying to beat not only with the rhythm of his own body, but that of another. Suddenly, he became all too acutely aware of the feeling of steel in his hand, the grip of a knife pitch as black cold against his palm. The pressure in his head continued to build alongside the deranged cyclical stimulation of what he and this monstrous stranger saw and heard and smelled and felt.Those pervasive not-thoughts raced through his fragmented mind again, none of them words or solid cognition but only overbearing feelings: he could stop this, he could end building insanity, this was in his control, he could do it, should do it, it had to stop, make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop...There was no self-awareness to the man's actions, his eyes distant and wild with irreparable madness now. The point of the ebony blade made purchase in his wrist and it sliced long and deep, up the length of his arm. Blood spilled torrentously from this fatal wound, flowing to the earth to feed the sapling Briarheart. The blade transferred hands, from his right to his left, and the same violent action was repeated to tear the flesh of his other forearm asunder. He wasn't on his feet for much longer and, much to his distraught, whatever had taken hold of his vulnerable mind never left him, at least not for so long as he was aware.The body lay sprawled and twisted at the roots of the Briarheart sapling, and several feet behind it the young man staggered before falling to his hands and knees. His heart raced, his head pounded, and his own mind was flooded with the final nonsensical thoughts that had occupied the drifter's head before death.Never had he skinwalked a man before.It had been so simple, initially: the stranger had been drunk, his mind softened and left susceptible by alcohol. What had happened there, at the end? Was it some innate understanding of his inevitable death? Some deep, instinctual sense of self-preservation? The sudden clash and combination of their consciousnesses had an experience like none other... a venture towards the edge of sanity, one that would have been so easy to tumble over.The young Reachmen began to tremble, violently, his arms suddenly struggling to hold him weight upright as his pale eyes stared, glazed and blank at the snow-covered dirt beneath him. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be away from the dead man and he began to crawl haphazardly away. He only made it a few feet before he felt a sudden lurching in his chest and he was forced to stop, expelling the contents of his stomach onto the ground. His entire body shook uncontrollably and he didn't understand, why was he so damn cold, even as his body was drenched with sweat beneath the warmth of the hides and skins he wore?For a moment he thought he would make it no further, that he would just collapse there in his own sickness and shake and convulse until he could do nothing but die. Slowly, the shock began to abate and he crawled a few feet further, keeping his back to the Briarheart sapling and its newest victim.It was done, at least. The ritual he had promised to Dannoch and Uela was completed, but he would never do this again. It was too much. To skinwalk a man was so different than any sort of beast, wild or tame. The sense of understanding, the stream of consciousness... there was too much to fight, too much to absorb, even if he hadn't wanted to, even though he had tried so desperately to not feel, to not know.His stomach churned and rolled again, threatening to expel more bile as his temples pounded furiously in time with his heavily-beating heart. Slowly but surely, he found his feet again, his limbs numb and still shaking. It was only a few hours before sunrise, before he would have to be ready to leave with Dannoch. He would try to sleep, knowing he needed to rest before they began their journey... and also knowing he wouldn't be able to. He could still feel it in the back of his head, a tangled amalgamation of thoughts and fears and feelings and emotions that were not his own.They would abate with time... he hoped.

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INTERLOPER

It was the ugly orange light of a blazing fire that woke her from her slumber. Her eyes opened and were immediately stung by smoke. She stood, though it didn't bring her as far up off the ground as it should have. Was she crawling? Perhaps. Yet as she moved around the pen, it became evident that she was moving faster than she should have on her hands and knees, faster than any man could move even on two legs."Passenger..."A voice heard, but not heard; she had heard it, yet her body had no response. In fact, it was at that moment that she realized that the voice was correct: she was merely a passenger, observing through the eyes of another. Try as she might, she had no impact on the movements of her body. She was still moving, circling wildly about the pen, eyes narrowed against the ash and smoke. There were others here with her, snow-white pelts beginning to stain with soot. They keened and whined and howled and snarled, just as confused as she.Through the smoke she saw hands, familiar hands, the scent of The Woman filling her nose in spite of the burning air. She rushed forward to meet them, whining as the hands began to unfasten the gate to allow her and the others freedom. She rushed out to The Woman, whose hands now lowered further, around her face, fingers brushing through her fur. She could hear screaming around her, but her eyes never left The Woman, even as her ears pricked and swiveled towards each horrific sound."No," The Woman told her, tone firm but gentle. "You cannot come. He is afraid." She could see sorrow in The Woman's eyes, and though she couldn't entirely understand these words (but she could, she was a passenger, she understood this language in a way that a wolf could not), she understood what no meant.The others had escaped the pen and now they had scattered. Their different temperaments dictated their actions: some went searching for their own people while others, less diligent and loyal, took to the surrounding woods to flee the growing fire."Go," The Woman urged, and, like 'no', this was something she understood. Yet she refused the order, even as The Woman withdrew from her. She remained where she was, half-seated, eyes straining through the smoke until she could no longer see her."Trespasser..."Another word, spoken in her own mind that the beast she inhabited gave no response to. The wolf remained so long that it seemed she might die there, surrounded by smoke and carnage, but finally, she began to move. Her head dropped low, close to the earth, allowing her less tainted air as she walked. Her eyes lit upon the twisted and charred corpses of other men and women and even children that she knew, though her gaze never lingered long. She sought a path to the forest, joining the others who had fled... but not for the sake of her own hide; she would flee, and she would follow The Woman and The Boy, because she was theirs and they were hers."Interloper."With this final declaration, the fire faded, as did the memory surrounding it. Uela was left, then, in what seemed like a void. There was ground beneath her feet, at least in the sense that there was 'ground' in a dream, but there was nothing to differentiate it from the space around her. It was only emptiness; not even blackness but a sheer lack of anything else but her... and she couldn't even be sure of that, as she couldn't see herself.You are no skinwalker. A statement, not any sort of question. As before, it was a voice that wasn't heard so much as it was felt. She knew without knowing that she knew that this was the voice of the wolf... and yet it wasn't. The wolf was not the wolf any longer.With an inability to respond, nothing but a passenger, the only option was silence in response to this accusation. In the void around here, something shifted. There was no noise that accompanied it, nor any sort of discernable movement... but a knowing. There was something in the emptiness around her, and it wasn't friendly."Who are you? You are not him. You trespass... you do not belong..." The voice that wasn't a voice had taken on a hostile bite to it and the sense of something lurking around her intensified. Something more could be felt them, an unpleasant crawling sensation in her mind as if cold, thin fingers had wormed their way inside."Interloper... where...?" The sensation intensified and suddenly there was pain, a pounding in her head, a pressure at her temples, the sensation of pins and needles along her scalp."Where...?" The voice demanded again, like an icepick to her brain. "Where, where, where..."It was trying to get in, that much became clear very quickly. For the first time since she arrived in this strange void, there was sound, an actual noise. It was the sound of something ripping, like a damp tarp being torn in two; it was a wet sound, visceral, and the snapping that began to accompany it was the sound of bones breaking and popping, wrenching from their sockets, the sound of her skull being shattered, burrowed into, torn open, hands digging in greedily, searching, seeking...At the point where it became unbearable it was gone, everything: the nothingness was replaced with the sudden sight of her own room, though she couldn't remember even opening her eyes. All that lingered from this bizarre dream was a deep, pounding ache in her head and a nauseating sense of disorientation.

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