Shadewylf

31 - Partner

The night was still as calming as always.

Tilting his head back, Toivo allowed the coolness of the night air to trickle through his fur, gently tugging at wisps of black before letting them settle again. Save a few patches of coiled cloud, the sky was as clear as it had been for the past few days. Silver gems speckled the dark, and with his sharp eyesight, he could make out every one of them. Some even seemed tinted with a coloured hue, dancing with long-gone magic.

It was the moon, however, in its steady climb to the east, that provided the majority of the night's silver glow. So close to being full, with only the slight slit that cut away its left side marking it as a gibbous oval rather than a perfect circle.

That circle would mark Toivo's eighteenth moon of life. He was a Sylfen, born of the full moon, a fact that he had paid little attention to until now. Was it only Shadewylves that took power from the most pure form of the moon? Or did all Pelts work that way, and they simply hadn't noticed?

Scuffing the pads of his paws on the grass, he felt for the Shadow inside. Even that power seemed to rear up towards the moon and bow, paying its respects to the goddess that resided there.

With a comfortable sigh, Toivo slid his paws across the earth, stretching out until he lay on his stomach. The grass tickled his sides. He couldn't fully make out its colour now, but he knew it to be a pale, yellow-tinged brown. Each strand was doubled over in thirst. It had to have been at least seven days since this place had seen rain, perhaps even more. Not that it bothered him a great deal; a dry night made it safe and easy for him to do what he did now.

After their training finished for the day, as the sun dipped towards the horizon, Montasir had offered him a room in the soldiers' quarters. There were numerous stone rooms there, he had said, each equipped with bedding collected by wolves sent outside to forage. But Toivo had spent long enough cramped inside a clammy cave, and asked instead to sleep outside, under the stars. Now, he acted as a night watch, committed to staying awake until the moon reached its summit, when another wolf would come and take his place.

Not that he minded. He knew he should be tired - the last few nights had been nothing more than a few snatched hours of sleep. But out here, watching the world grow quieter and the light fade, he had no wish to close his eyes.

A flash of light caught his eye. Snapping his gaze to it, he saw a glimmer of yellow, there and then gone. Perhaps another Shadewylf carrying a lantern as they returned to the cave. He surveyed the area again, but spotted nothing more. Maybe there was nothing there at all.

His eyes returned to the stars. Tracing the sky, he found Nethropiade, the stag, seeming to leap out at him with antlers shining. The number of times he'd searched for the constellation beside Lexi seemed to have ingrained its position somehow.

Was Lexi staring up at those very stars, right now? He had no way of knowing, and yet he hoped she was.

He picked out the brightest and boldest star of the stag - Jedrek, the hero of Nethropiade's story, said to be the strongest wolf ever to live. One of the original Starrnyx. Time and time again, Lexi had told him Jedrek's story, and they'd shared its every up and down. They'd even speculated what their stories would be, if they ever made it to the stars.

I'm going to change the world one day, she would say to him, so many times. Something bad will come, and I'll stop it. I'll be a hero. Her eyes would shine a bright hazel, more beautiful than the smoothest of tree bark. And you'll be my special partner. We'll be heroes together.

A faint smile played on Toivo's snout. "Heroes together," he whispered to those stars.

A pang of longing, only surfacing now after being smothered by the safety the cave held, wormed its way to the surface. Maybe it had been there before and he'd simply ignored it, or maybe it was a new feeling, one only brought on by the freshness of the night air. But as he kept his eyes fixed on Jedrek's star, his smile slowly faded to nothing.