Sun Meadow Pack

a pack set in 13th century scotland

currently: mourning the loss of their gentle herbalist, hylvír; he passed quietly in the night, smiling and offering words of comfort to his friends. on his death bed, níolyn confessed his feelings for him and is now haunted in silence by all the love with nowhere to go. as the weeks pass, selvyth helps him channel his grief into nature's beauty. hylvír will be greatly missed. also mourning the loss of selvyth's mate, sequoia.

the world is dark and ancient here. wood smoke curling from crofts on the foot of the highland hills; earth brown and black and red; dying bracken, frostbitten at the tips; slow, gurgling burns below the old pine treeline, their water icy white or brackish brown; rain lashing down in cruel, wind-choked sheets; distant bagpipes echoing over the lochs and glens; lera and herla alike freezing in their burrows and upon the moors, and at the feet of old, stone circles. they say a pack lives here, nestled cold and secretive in the valley among the hills; they say a god lives among the snow at the tip of the great mountain, sadistic and unfeeling in the form of a great red deer. this is a place of superstition, of fear, of death and story. but who knows, when the moon rises, what truly lurks out here among the fog and the heather? 

when first víolette created this pack, it was soft and kind, made in his image. he cared for each of the creatures who shared his home, looked up upon the distant stars with a quiet, gentle love, trod the territories of his pack - first the golden grasslands, then the red desert - with a soft-tongued sadness that came to be his mark. he bowed his head to eagles and shared meals with weasels, warmed the nests of sea birds and wandered the world with deer and mice. he never met a strange wolf with malice, but with charity and kindness.

then, when next they made their home in the bleak, ancient highlands, in this world of myth and slaughter, something dark began to seep into the hearts of some of his packmates. whispered to by voices on the wind, they turned their devotion to the heartless god named herne; they sacrificed innocent lives within the stone circles of man; they smeared blood upon their faces and danced beneath the cold, white moon. the pack rots silently from the inside out, black and bitter.

the lera are whispering.

they say there is a prophecy: a fawn with a leaf of oaken upon his forehead. they say he is wandering the highlands in search of truth.

they say there is a stag without antlers forging for himself a tyrant’s crown in the meadows of the south. they say his power is growing.

the sun meadow pack is something quiet and kind; they would not swear allegiance to a stag with blood-stained hooves and an army of sharpened antlers. they would not decay with the secret of a coup. they would not slaughter sister and brother. they would not leave víolette to rot beneath the highland moon. 

would they?