ORIGIN

"It is good to meet you, then, Melpo," he told her.

Her question briefly had him puzzled (his ears rotating and catching no sound). Her own magic had echoed her voice--perhaps she did not understand this?--but it reminded him, after a beat, of Vyette and of Kazgut: his pack, so esoterically strange and inextricably linked, who had one day wandered off together. He had not seen them since: the half-frail, ethereal white Vyette, slender and gentle, something otherworldly in her. And the strong black dog, distant and loyal, the shadow to her moonlight.

He wondered, for a moment, where they might have gone--as sometimes he did--but then looked to Melpomene. She was as if the two of them had merged: faintly-other, black and white both, and her stone, even, was faintly reminiscent of the shimmering moonstone that had made up Kazgut's teeth. Not the same, no; but like a remote echo of it. And Vyette had ever been, had she not?--half-part of some distant, other world, head tilted as though she listened, delicately, to something no one else could ever hear.

Fireheart's answer, then, came matter-of-fact, yet thoughtful; his mind was open to the idea that the bird could, perhaps, hear things that he could not. Or, he thought, wryly, perhaps she truly did hear someone hiding and whispering--or just an echo of herself.

"I do not hear whispering," he answered, carefully, slowly; "but I have known others who hear things that I cannot. Or see things I do not. We all have our own magic, I think, and it might do many things. Mine is heat, and fire. Light, warmth, to provide life, or destruction."

Fireheart paused, and tilted his head, peering down at Melpomene. "Your magic echoed your voice through the bones; that much I heard. Perhaps you can try again?" he added, his gaze kind, encouraging, as was his tone.

The big white wolf's head slowly turned, this way and that, as what the crow called her "song" began. It was a discordant melody, wrapped and weaved around the bones of the dead, and none of it was particularly pleasant. Fireheart felt himself tense, faintly--not out of any real fear, or even concern, but because the song itself was deeply unsettling.

If one could even call it song.

His mind reacted in a way that, in retrospect, he could only call a frown, though to say he'd mentally frowned would be rather a strange description. But he looked around, regardless, ears shifting and twitching to listen to the whispers.

He then peered down at Melpomene, and if he could have arched a brow in quizzical questioning, he would have. Is this what she had intended-? he asked himself--and given the proud, contented way she lay settled against him, it seemed that it was. It was no failure, no backfire of her magic; no, she thought this sort of thing beautiful.

Strange.

"I hear it," he answered, at last, muzzle tipping up and slowly panning to and fro as he once again listened. He leaned down to offer another shimmering wave of heat, jaws open--not overpowering, but warming to her damp feathers--before he spoke further. "It is poetic--do you know what that means?--but it does almost sound like the whispers of the dead. Bones--those are what remains when a creature, like you or I, is killed. Is no more. That song--those whispers--I warn you," he offered down, gently but solemnly, "I warn you that if you find that whispering pleasant--many will find it terrible. It rather grates on the nerves," he added.

His speech was perhaps sophisticated for one so young, but he spoke slowly, using tone and nods of his snout as much as anything; he hoped she'd understand. But to summarize, just in case: "Be careful who you use it around. Not all may see it kindly." A pause, then, curiosity lacing his mind as the haunted sussurrus continued to claw at his ears. "And you hear this all the time-?" Perhaps, he thought, pondering, that is truly the sound that they make; and perhaps her magic allows her to hear it. Terribly unsettling, if so. I wonder... do they suffer?

Fireheart's eyes roamed over the bones, his mind flicking through uncomfortable possibilities, though his body remained motionless for the benefit of the bird.

For a moment--startled--the wolf feared that Melpomene was dying. Those brief, grim topics, the bird's head dropping low, sent short-lived fright through him. But he realized then that she was simply nodding off--and he hadn't intended to stop here all day, but he found that he could not simply pick up and leave. Ahh, well; I was hardly in any rush to be anywhere.
He decided at least to rest here with her--though she'd just emerged (and isn't it strange, he thought to himself, how sometimes a long rest can be most exhausting of all?) until she woke. The whispers, now, had faded, and Fireheart turned to peer this way, then that, his ears rotating. Finding nothing to alarm him, he settled lower on the stone; a sigh escaping his nose, his hind legs pushing out from beneath him, so that his hind end was splayed out on its side rather than lying upright, like a sphinx. Thick-ruffed neck lowered down, eclipsing Melpomene's downy feathers, and he laid his long muzzle alongside her, pressed to his own slender limbs.

Firelit eyes remained open, for the most part; scanning the cave with absent alertness, though sometimes, they slipped closed, and--briefly--the white wolf slept.