you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

He felt too old for what if's—those pointless little mind exercises where you dreamed up a future forever out of reach, and woke with nothing but the taste of bitterness in your dry mouth, like old blood drying between your teeth. He felt too old for thinking back on a life lost and thinking those two cursed words and wondering what it would've been like had so many things not happened, but most of all: wondering what it would've been like had he stayed.


But he hadn't.


And for the longest time, he hadn't even known what he had left.


It wasn't easy, to wake from oblivion, to slowly pull yourself together from a world in which you felt only half-alive, in a setting where your heart pounded with a certain kind of pain but you couldn't find the reason why. He had lived, a shadow in his own mind, sworn and stood by his instincts and survived simply because his body demanded the hunt, but as the vastness of the world came back into focus, he had become the prey. Bit by bit that ache in his heart, and the nagging feeling at the back of his mind, had grown stronger, until every day was spent hounded by a feeling of imprecise loss, the need to be somewhere, do something, find someone. Ice had roamed, had settled down, found a pack which didn't know him, but that was fine, because he hadn't known himself, either. He had been a wolf with a face and a name, but no past, no soul. Fangs had flashed in the warm sunlight of a summer evening, ears had flattened against heads, paws and claws torn up the earth as he spoke the only language he knew how—and so, he had become part of something else, something new, something where he kept his distance because that thing lodged in his heart kept telling him that this wasn't going to last forever.


What did, anyway? All things ended. Even stars fell.


Pale ears pressed against an equally pale head. The memories, made fuzzy by the sharpness of a rock, had come back in a trickle, and piece by piece, Ice had realized all that he had—white breath spiraled out of his half-open maw. He had no word for it. Left behind? He hadn't known what he was doing. Lost? It made it seem so final.


He didn't want it to be final. And maybe, scoured clean of the past weighing upon his shoulders, he had not wanted to remember. Maybe, he had clung, without knowing it, to the bliss of ignorance, until the weight of the guilt became too great and the narrow confines of his mind opened to let it all back in. He wasn't sure if he possessed enough self-awareness to tell if that was the case, and through the raging flames of shame, how could he even begin to guess..? It was like trying to tell where one bruise ended and another began when in truth they covered all of you.


Names and faces connected in tentative patterns, a spiderweb spun of blood and light, but as he had wandered the northlands with a pack he could not bring himself to love he had tried to deny his memories. There was too much ignominy in what he had done—what he had become.


How he had cursed Indru each time the wolf had left, how he had vowed to never become him, to never abandon Corinna, to—in that hour of hope and light before everything had come crashing down with words he now only remembered in meaning—never abandon his sons. And all of this, and more, he had done. He had become that which he had learned to loathe. How did you even move on from that? How did you live with it, when it was an acrid fire burning in the back of your throat, a constant desire to throw yourself someplace deep, from which you can never rise..?


He didn't know if he remembered everything. He didn't know if he remembered enough. How could he know what he had forgotten?


But he had one hope, one salvation, he could do the thing Indru had never done: he could return.


Snow fell gently from a cloudy sky—it was the first of the season, at least for him, a pale, powdery carpet dusting the forest floor. He could still see the brown of the earth beneath it, the shadows underneath the upturned edges of frozen leaves, and among the trunks of the great evergreens he saw the bright red of deciduous trees. It smelled unfamiliar, all of it, too much of north and cold, not enough like—like old moss and swift rivers, of times when life wasn't that disastrous but still, fairly disastrous. Silver eyes blinked in the shadow of the forest. He knew that he was getting closer.


He also knew that he was afraid.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

Snow whispered beneath his paws; well-worn pads connected with the myriad of crystals, the cold touch comforting, familiar, in a way that had nothing to do with his past here.


Ice had come from mountains and snow, from rocky slopes and ledges, caribou herds and harsh realities, and as he walked through a forest so vast it seemed a cathedral, he had one of those childhood memories with him: snow. It fell with its own, special barely-sound, made the trickle of seconds seem slower than his heart was convinced they were. He wasn't home in any sense of the word, he wasn't sure if he ever would be, but for a moment, as the wind blew from the south and brought with it the scent of the Lore, he dared to think that, maybe, things would be alright.


His silver eyes opened a fraction more as his head tilted back. The snowflakes spun gently between the trees, fell with a rare kind of solemnity. They melted on his nose but stayed on his back, little white pinpricks on the tips of pale hairs; he paused for a moment to shake himself, and when he stopped—it hit him.


He wasn't alone anymore.


Since leaving his previous pack, Ice had stayed clear of wolves. He rather liked to travel alone (and uninjured), but something about the Lore changed things, opened up his heart, his mind. The closer he came, the more frequent the scents—the closer he came, the greater the need to ask questions. To find out what had happened to the loved ones he had left behind. Coming to the borders wasn't enough. It would never be enough. He had to make it, all the way, to see if he could be forgiven where he probably would not have forgiven himself. Some betrayals ran too deep, and some wounds were too old to heal.


A tangle of black legs stood out against the snow, thin in the slender way of youth, and as Ice watched with a frozen face and a frozen heart, it righted itself into a young wolf. It lay on its belly, fluffy and dusted in the newly fallen snow, tongue sticking out—everything Ice had been, everything Ice was not. Carefree. Playful. In the moment. Ice, he was half in the past, half in the future, caught in the wasteland of fear and regret. Trapped in a cage of his own doing, frozen bars and shadowed veils blocking out the wind, the sun, the scent of life.


He paused, all four paws firmly on the ground. The sanctity of the place was broken, the illusions shattered; it was nothing but a redwood forest, some snow, and two wolves.


His lips twitched, tail rising. He didn't know what to do—had never done—and the years had moved him from babbling and insecure to stalwart and dominating. Better to be the predator.


But as he stood there with his aching bones and aching heart, he used that third part of himself—his aching mind, and the thought which crossed it was, and what exactly are you going to do?. Chase him out of the forest? But why? He had no claims on this place, the wolf was barely even in his path, it was the first one he had chanced upon since coming to the outskirts of the Lore—he had nothing here to defend. It wasn't like the youth was defiling his snow, or something like that.


With a sigh his rugged hackles fell back against his neck. The problem, Ice diagnosed, is that I think too much. Thinking was what had knotted him into an anxiety-ridden ball afraid of the rejection he expected—and yet, thinking was what had saved this poor, snow-rolling young wolf from suffering at the teeth of a disturbed Ice. Huffing out another cloud of white, Ice stalked closer, closer, closer, until he was but a few yards away; head neutral, ears pricked, he simply stared at the other wolf, willing him to make sense.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

It's the Lore.


Nothing is ever going to make sense. So stop hoping for it. The black youth rose and it sent a lightning flash of memory jolting through him—and for a moment, past and present overlapped. Like, how do you even untangle this shit? Where do you start? How do you know what's just the fabrication of your fractured mind, and what is real? What had been real? At what point do you learn to just accept that you might never remember all you had forgotten? And to stop living with the fear that you'll run into someone you ought to remember, but don't?


See, the problem was simple: when the stranger stood up, he showed himself to be a young, lanky thing. Jet black, some white splotches Ice's mind easily counted out of the equation, and what do you find yourself with when you take this in..?


Rhysis.


But Rhysis had to be so much older now, Rhysis hadn't had those white patches on his chest and shoulders, Rhysis would've sneered at him or something, because Rhysis didn't know that Ice had, mostly, forgotten about him until just now; and that split second when he had, almost, almost, thought that this was Rhysis..? Yeah. Those few, precious moments had been hard-packed with adrenaline and fear, anger and confusion. Rhysis had been the second rock of a landslide. He had been part of the beginning of the end, and it hadn't been a quick, painfree process. Hardship after hardship until, over a year later, Ice had simply disappeared, cut off from memory.


“What, you never seen someone playin’ in the snow before?” Ice, still thunderstruck by the complicated acrobatics his mind was doing, let his lower jaw drop open soundlessly. Because, what could he say? 'Yeah, I have, but not someone that made me remember a ton of things I had forgotten without knowing I had forgotten'? Mmh, great.


"Shut up," he heard himself say instead, but the words were not accompanied by anything else. By the tone of his voice, he might just as well have said 'hello', and his posture hadn't changed in the slightest. Taken by surprise, Ice blinked. Shifted his weight slightly, felt the slow flexing of his muscles. "I'm practically named after snow. And—" stopstopstopstop— (it's going too fast, too fast) "—I have a lifetime's head start of experience in snow-rolling compared to you."


And that was that. Ice's elbows touched the carpet of frozen leaves and thin snow, tail a flag raised above him, eyes bright; an invitation to play if there ever was one, and the challenge laid in the silence just behind his teeth, come on, let me show you just -how- to roll in the snow.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

There was something rapid in his pulse—a fleet-footed tremble shuddering through his veins, the sick after-taste of adrenaline crawling up the back of his throat. It bled out of him in waves, demanding that he shiver, but he suppressed it; he didn't have time for this physical shit to occur.


He was a body and a mind. He needed one of them to be strong when the other was not.


But in that moment, neither was; his mind babbled through worn teeth, and a particular kind of post-adrenaline weakness made him want to wobble. He was just Ice, worn thin by the years, hanging on to a threadbare sanity and doing his best not to dream too hard of a future. Dreams hurt when they broke, became splinters, and drove themselves home deep in your heart.


So in a way, the moment became more than just happenstance comic relief. There was something old and familiar and comforting in having his words run out of his mouth with little thought put behind them—in not being quite in control, to leave the worrying, the planning, to someone else. "Oh, really snowflake?" the other retorted, and Ice just barely had the time to be grateful the other wolf had taken it lightly to be told to shut up. Teeth flashed but without all the other signs to spell out violence, claws scrabbled among the leaves, and Ice bounced slightly in place in response to it all—and for a moment, he thought he understood Marsh. Less words, more doing. It was words and the intricacies of emotions, needs, wants, beyond the purely necessary, that drove everyone into heartache and trouble. The words shut up were tantalizing, danced upon his tongue again, but he chose not to spit them out as the black youth kicked up some of the fine powdery snow in his direction. Ice's teeth snapped shut on the air and the snowflakes melted in the heat of his maw.


There was some odd, subtle kind of hierarchy to the thing, one he couldn't put his paw on—he stood bowed, tail wagging, teeth showed in a slight smile and elbows on the ground, and yet, the other waited for his move. Didn't engage. Was he afraid? Uncertain? Why did he leave it up to Ice, when he clearly had the energy for it..? And slip he fell, and Ice chuffed out a bit of laughter before deciding to follow his own advice—shut up, and do.


Blunt claws dug into frozen soil and tore up the leaves, left them as sin-dark stains upon the pristine cover of snow, and he lunged at Dread. Lips pulled back slightly as he aimed a quick nip towards the wolf's nearest ear, before making to disengage with a bounce back—eyes bright, white breath puffing out of open, smiling jaws.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

The beginning of winter's first real chill became a counterpoint to the warm air rushing out of his mouth, a touch of cool and sanity against his skin hidden in the depths of his thick fur. It wasn't cold yet, per se, but it was definitely threatening to remain frozen until the springs thawed everything, and Ice, well, in that moment, he loved it. The snow touching his elbows as he bounded back from his first "attack", and the way the faint breeze blew through his pale fur.. it was just something about it he couldn't properly put into words, a soothing touch trying to banish the fever of doubt and anguish.


But, he thought with a crooked grin and a couple of wags of his bushy tail, at least he wasn't alone—not right now. There was someone here to banish the shadows, to anchor him in life and the present.


Said someone reared up, swept forward like a liquid shadow, with a kind of thoughtless grace Ice envied in his older bones. (He tries to forget that, too.) A black paw shot out mid-leap, tapped him on the muzzle, and Ice's teeth clicked shut in the air after it. His own paws shuffled through the snow and leaves as he spun to keep facing his "assailant", something sharp, a keen kind of focus, merging with the playfulness in his eyes.


Darkness rose up to meet the light again. Ice snapped a teasing warning in the general direction of the other's forelimbs, and tried to stop remembering all the times he'd done this with Triell—another large, black wolf with a white patch on his chest and eyes of liquid gold. A low growl, softened by the playful twitches of his tail, rumbled deep in his broad chest, and Ice braced beneath the weight of the yearling. He was promising to become big, and Ice, well, he knew that he couldn't stand there with him on his back all day...


But for a while, they were in an equipoise, two opposing forces in perfect balance.


Then Ice twisted his neck to the side, jaws open, trying to grab and hold onto Dread—his foreleg, the side of his neck, anything that wouldn't particularly break if he tugged on it. Then, he simply gave in to the pressure the younger wolf exerted on him, legs folding, and he fell to the side, trying to bring Dread down with him.