FSE

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Meredith awoke suddenly, a chattering in her ears. Indistinguishable syllables that blurred together, just on the edge of hearing, as if carried by the wind, some so alien as to be impossible to shape via a physical tongue. A warning.

She sat upright, her amber eyes wide, and winced as the light streaming in from the outside of the cave hit them, her irises complaining as they forced her pupils into slits. Her first thought was to glance to the side, to make sure the cooking fire she had used last night was doused so as not to give herself away, and it was. Rising, she collected her bow, drawing an arrow from the quiver laying next to her and nocking it, urging her eyes to adjust to the light of the morning sooner. The chatter did not abate. Voices that did not know a word of any language babbled at her nonetheless as if sitting on her shoulders, murmuring incomprehensible things into her ears. Young spirits, warning her of something's approach in the desperate hope that she might aid them later in their mayfly-short life spans.

The vixen's tail twitched, followed by her nose, involuntarily. She could not smell anything. The air was crisp and dark, the winter having only just abated. It was early spring and the snow had only just melted, leaving the air heavy with humidity. It was cold, but the spirit-talker remained still in the darkness of her cave, remaining patient. Her mind reached out to the spirit inside her bow, rousing it into wakefulness, asking it to guide her aim.

A twig snapped, and her head pivoted slightly, intent upon it now that she knew where to look. She raised her bow, slowly enough so that the movement would not be easily seen.

An indistinct, shaggy blob, concealed by the bushes, resolved itself into that of a large, stocky wolf, easily large enough to come up past her thighs. It's fur was gray, a stripe of black running from between it's ears down to it's tail, and only now beginning to shed it's winter coat. It seemed intent upon her cave, yet relaxed, ambling towards it with a decided lack of urgency, paws crunching at the snow underfoot, nose twitching. Meredith relaxed slightly, letting her bow drop, but she did not rise from her crouch. She was comfortable with wolves, and through the spirits had learned how to force her body and mind into the shape of one, but she was no fool. 'A wild animal is not an object, it is a being, and beings are unpredictable.' A piece of advice she often gave to those new to the woodlands.

The wolf continued to approach, closer and closer, until it was at the very mouth of her cave, where it paused and then sat at the entrance, as if expecting something. Its nose twitched, it's eyes intent upon the darkness. It had not seen her, for it's gaze was focused an inch or two to her left, but as the seconds passed, she realized it knew she was there. Was it ridden by a wolf-spirit wishing to speak to her in the flesh? She could sense nothing from it.

After a long moment, the wolf continued to sit calmly, and Meredith cautiously decided to make the first move. She rose, bow still in front of her, and let the light filtering in from outside the cave illuminate her flame-orange fur. The wolf's eyes caught hers, and neither of them moved. Now she could smell it. Dander, of course. It was shedding, like most things in the forest around the spring. It was male, she realized, too, after a moment. There was something else, too, underneath it, that she couldn't quite place...

Meredith took a step forward, then another, coming to the mouth of the cave, letting her bow drop to one hand, her other reaching out to grasp the cave wall as she cautiously approached. If it wanted her to make the first move, then she would. Her cloak was left on the floor next to her bedroll, as she did not sleep in it. Instead, she was in only her underclothes, dark green linens that concealed little save her breasts and upper thighs. It was not as if a wolf would care. He watched her with interest, one paw's weight shifting hestitantly before he approached her, his ears lowering slightly. She raised her hand and felt his cold nose press into it, sniffing at her.

She had spent enough time around wolves - and enough time as one - to know interest, and he was very interested in her. He circled her, nose pressing at her side, and then her thigh, sniffing at each part of her as she followed him, a smile growing on the witch's face. "What brings you here, then?" The witch murmured to him as he brushed past her legs in front of her for another pass. "You're being quite friendly..."

She smelt the growing musk an instant before she saw the wolf's penis, long and stiff underneath his belly, and felt his nose press against her rump through the linen that covered it. Her nostrils flared as she took in a breath, her tail lashing out to cuff him on the head, but the wolf was undeterred. She swore she could see the mischief in his eyes as he circled her when she tried to turn. He bounded about in front of her, panting now, a gentle whine escaping his throat.

'I am being sexually propositioned by a wolf.' Meredith thought, as her confusion turned to bemusement, and then to confusion again. The wolf mating season had ended long ago. While she felt a kinship with wolves, why would one come here and be so aroused by her? Had he followed her from one of her own romps in wolf form? She was in season, her cloying heat mingling with the wolf's aroused scent in the dampness of the cave to create a musk that even a human would find unmistakable. She had never heard of a wolf being aroused by a foxen, much less all but begging one to mate as this one was now.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the wolf stuck his nose between her legs, sniffing her and licking at her inner thighs, and she took in another sharp breath, her tail lashing. The wolf darted between her legs before she could react, took the linen covering her rump in it's mouth and, with a powerful tug, ripped it. The garment fluttered to the ground, leaving her lower half naked, and as she turned about, still somewhat overwhelmed by it's advances, the wolf dove after her sex and began to lick her. Meredith's mind went blank with pleasure. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her feet slipped outwards upon the cave floor, and she spread her legs as she was assaulted by the wolf's tongue, breath leaving her lungs in a hiss.

The barrage of licking continued only for a few seconds, but it was already driving the witch to madness. She tried to turn, but felt paws press upon the small of her back and found herself bored roughly to the ground, on her hands and knees. She looked back, but her head had turned barely halfway before she felt the wolf's weight bear down on top of her, feeling him get into position. Her eyes closed involuntarily as she felt the wolf sink into her, the vixen lowering her body to the ground, mouth open in a loud groan as the wolf began to take her. Her tail arched and lashed at his side. "Ohhh... Very eager." She commented almost nonchalantly, rasping a laugh into the cave's echoing darkness as she was taken so roughly, fingers digging into the rocky floor as she sought purchase. "Very, very eager indeed..."

Meredith writhed and shifted on the cave floor, her laughter soon shifting into outright moaning as the pleasure grew too much. She smelled the wolf's scent mingling with her own musk, felt the whines and growls from the creature atop her. It spoke to some deep part of her soul, beyond penetrating pleasure of being taken. She pawed and writhed and tossed her head and felt the wolf lick at her hair as they ferally coupled. When the act of shapeshifting has become intrinsic to someone's body, she had told one of her students once, it becomes akin to a new, unknown muscle somewhere in your body. One only has to learn how to pull it, and the rest is automatic. And, much like a muscle, it will sometimes twitch involuntarily.

The vixen, overwhelmed by her passion, found her body drawn to become like that of her lover.

She felt her body stretch and alter as her legs curled up underneath her into far more proper positions for someone so prostrate, felt her hands become paws shakily scrabbling at the ground for leverage. Her thin fox muzzle blunted and became the wide one of a wolf, but her eyes, piercing golden-yellow, remained the same as she tossed her muzzle from side to side. Her grunts and gasps and moans were replaced by wolven whines and huffs. All the while, the wolf took her, savagely, relentlessly.

They came together, tossing, panting and turning. There were no howls, simply a long, whining groan of satisfaction from them both as Meredith felt his knot lock them together.

Meredith's next thought, after the feelings of blissful, sweet release cleared her brain, was that she was on her side, with her imprompteu wolven lover still inside her. Yet there were arms around her. She felt touches upon her fur from behind in the slow, deliberate motions that only belong to those who have just had sex. She let out a contented sound, halfway between a yawn and a rumble of pleasure, and looked up, blinking tiredness out of her eyes.

The face of a wolfen looked down at her with a faint sense of satisfaction, even pride. Young, she noted, by the shape of his mask, the juvenile fur on his face not having fully turned from it's black color yet, backing the white and silver that highlighted his muzzle and ears. Yet for all this he was well built. She could feel the definition of his muscles against her back through his own fur, and feel the contented fullness of him inside her. Definitely an adult, she decided. The spirits chattered in her ears about their union. 'Another. Another talker. The two bind. What do they wish of us?'

She ignored them. She needed no bargains. She knew what she wanted. She took her own body again, growing in his embrace, and felt him hold her tighter. His hands played at her breasts as she entwined her legs with the wolf's own. The vixen grinned as she tilted her muzzle back and felt his lips meet hers eagerly, speech forgotten, names forgotten, only the company of the other shapeshifter mattering to either.

Soon they were mating again, as themselves this time, and she knew that it would be a long time before she was satisfied yet.

--

"I'm sorry..." The wolfen groaned with satisfaction when they had finally approached some form of calm, his hot breath upon her ears. "... for the suddenness, but..."

Meredith growled in contentment, cutting him off. Her head rested on the wolfen's shoulder now, having turned herself to face him at some point in their session. The vixen laughed huskily, her feet playing along his furred legs. "I was worried for a minute that you might fuck as hard in your own body as you did as a wolf. Then you truly would have torn me asunder."

"Gentler after the first one." He grunted, faint amusement playing through his fatigue. His voice, deep and rumbling as so many wolfen were, was somehow simpler than Meredith's clearer, more archaic turns of phrase. Meredith felt his tongue teasing at the top of one of her ears. "They told me about you. The things you could do. You... are like me, aren't you? You hear them?" He was hesitant as he asked this, as if he wasn't quite sure about the words flowing from his mouth.

"Like you?" She removed her head to grin upwards at him, her hair falling about her shoulders, offering her breasts only the faintest of concealment. "A spirit-talker? An outcast? A shapeshifter?" I am. Since as far back as I can remember, I have heard them, whispering into my mind."

"I heard them first when I was eight." His muzzle inclined slightly, to rest against hers. Meredith was struck by how he looked at her. His eyes were what gave away his youth. Though he was taller than her in his regular shape, he looked at her with a faint twinge of desperation, as if peering into her for answers. He had none of the assurance of age. He looked as though he was a lost puppy. "It's gotten worse ever since. I can't stop hearing them. I..." He sensed her eye contact, and broke off, looking to the side in the darkness.

"When did you leave?" Meredith asked, suddenly, sitting up slightly as she sensed his distress. So he had come not just to mate, but for guidance. An unusual combination, but one she was not averse to.

"Leave?" He asked, looking at her again, almost as if he was questioning the finality of the word.

"Leave." It was, indeed, final. When one of their kind fully awoke, hearing the babble of the natural world around them, their parting from civilized company was rarely pleasant, or temporary.

"... I... don't know. Months ago. I don't remember much." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, before they sprang back open with that same sence of urgency, magnified now as he stared into her eyes. "The chatter... does it ever stop?"

"No." She answered, truthfully, her muzzle touching the underside of his, her nose playing along the edge of his chin. "You have awoken to the beings around you. It is the way we are, and we are bound to it, whenever we awaken."

Her partner fell silent at that. She could sense his disquiet. He eyed something over her shoulder, as if his mind was preoccupied with finding a way not to believe.

"I am Meredith, if they did not tell you that already." The vixen smiled, bringing her eyes up to be level with his.

"Davik. Davik Mon-" He was silenced as Meredith placed a padded finger to his lips.

"Your last name. Forget it. You have no family anymore." She pulled back to look into his eyes, hoping that the dour seriousness that she felt cast it's way across her features would reinforce how important this was. "Even if they yet live and remember you, even if they see you now and again, even if you watch them from afar, it is better if you consider yourself your own. We are all outcasts. All of us. We cannot live in cities. We cannot have normal lives. Very little is denied to you, but that will never change. The sooner you are used to that, and the sooner you shed your useless surname, the easier it will be."

Davik inclined his muzzle. "Never? No matter how much they teach me?" She could see some wolfen spirit finally emerge in the well built adolescent's eyes, as he seemed to grow indignant with doubt.

"No." She said, with as much unhesitating conviction as before, as she traced a claw along the lines of his muscles behind his shedding fur. "Pity them, for while they are deaf, you may hear the pulse and flow of the world. You can do things that even their best mages cannot. Your own spirit can transcend your body. You already know how to take the form of an animal. With some effort, I am assuming. It will become much easier, with time. You will learn more. Much, much more. And, if you let me teach you..."

His muzzle tilted away from hers, his eyes shifting to the cave wall, and Meredith knew that he was not reassured. "What of your fabled bow and knife? The ones they tell me are 'spirit-bound?' Can't I make something similar? Something that will block the noise?"

"You can make your own fetishes, in time." Meredith chose her words carefully. "They can be anything. Any spirit that will serve you or you can force into dormancy can become a useful tool. But one thing that no spirit can help you is to deny your own nature... I'm sorry, Davik. There is no way. You will get used to it."

She felt tension building in his muscles, and suddenly felt his hands press into her back as he began to take her once more. She groaned, rolling her head from side to side, claws digging into his chest-fur, ignoring the building chatter in her ears as their bodies entwined even closer.

"I'm sorry. I can't accept that." Davik whispered into her ear, mid-coitus, and as Meredith writhed and orgasmed, she was surprised to feel the tingle of a spirit assault upon her mind, the sensation of some alien being suffusing her body. She felt drowsy, her eyes half lidding, and felt herself unable to resist the call of sleep. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He kept whispering to her, even as he continued to mate with her, slowly and steadily.

Meredith felt no shock or even disquiet at the betrayal of her lover. Rather, she felt bemused. He had learned quickly, and she knew she had been bested. If naything, she was pleased at how easily he had managed it. She gave him a voluptious grin as black pressed in on the corners of her vision, trying to stay awake for a few precious seconds longer against the lilting drive of the spirit's call, and was satisfied when she distantly felt him climax inside her, forcing him to give that at least.

'He will make a wonderful student.'

Conciousness faded from her mind, and she was still.

--

When Meredith awoke, she was naked, as she had been before, her fur still damp from her own juices and the scent of sex in the air around her. She had been covered by her bedroll, no doubt by the wolf as he had left her. From the sunlight outside, it couldn't have been more than an hour since they had started.

She felt about, feeling for her equipment, and was unsurprised to find his scent cloying to it. Her bow and knife were missing. "So cunning, for one so young." She sighed to herself, pulling her legs underneath her and closing her eyes, shuddering at the breeze wafting from the cave mouth as it played over her body.

She felt the same presence as before, hovering in the cave with her, but no longer assaulting her mind. Instead it merely watched. 'The Red One has been bested by another of her craft.' Came a voice in her mind, clearer than the dull chatter around her. 'How does she feel of this?'

'Surprisingly curious. Why place your lover to sleep and then steal their weaponry?' Meredith mused back to the spirit in her mind.

'He wishes to make the noise stop. He wishes to hear the voices of others of his own kind again.'

'And I suppose, then, that he thinks my spirit-bound trinkets will somehow help him to understand that.' She sighed, audibly. 'You bear no oath to him anymore, spirit. Serve me now, and I will reward you later. Tell me where he is.'

'I would gladly serve the Red One. I hoped that you might not destroy me for serving him. You seem... riverlike. Flowing over the stones instead of through them.'

'I am nothing if not an endless river, spirit, flowing forward until my death. Show me.'

'As you wish.'

Meredith's eyes fluttered for a moment, and then she opened her eyes, stood, and set off through the wilderness, certain of her direction. Her naked form melded fluidly into that of the wolf, and she was off, running steadily through the trees.

--

Davik, unlike Meredith, had a permanent home.

It was crude, but it was functional. A tiny one-room hut, slowly lashed together through sheer trial and error over the last month of his life here in the lonely southern forest. He had broken two axes - one bought, one stolen - from local villages, felling trees and hewing crude planks to put together the shelter through painstaking labor. In front of it was a fire pit and around it were dug pit traps and snares, and he often had rabbits to eat each morning. He was surprised at how well he had managed. The damned voices in his head might have pushed him along subtly, but there was only so much they could possibly know of carpentry.

Of course, he had thought dourly, many a time as he was building it, he would very much wish it not to be permanent. He didn't want to live here, didn't want to live like some sort of barely civilized animal away from his family and his surname and the Old Tribe it had come from, didn't want to have to steal axes and hew logs and ignore the constant, never ceasing babbling in his ears in order to have some shelter from the rain.

Davik paused at the edge of the clearing, the vixen's tools still gathered up under his arm, and felt himself frown as he stared at the ramshackle hut. No, he didn't want this to be permanent. He just wanted to go home.

'This isn't home. I'll never accept it.' He kicked angrily at one of the snares that had missed it's mark. A waste of good bait. How dare she? They had told her she was one of the most powerful witches around, and the only answer she could offer was what was a very long-winded version of "get used to it?" What kind of witch was she? The townsfolk whispered about Meredith, the Red Witch, told about her supposed deeds and exploits, about how she could do anything and go anywhere and have anybody she wanted. The spirits had led them right to her. He had mated with her! She had been irresistible.

But she had to be wrong.

"Get used to it." He muttered sardonically under his breath.

His grandfather, esteemed wolfen and eternally distant leader of the household, had said all the time when he had cut his hands or wounded his feet or gotten his nose bitten by something in the grass. "Get used to it." Get used to pain? Get used to being barely able to walk because of the thrice-damned knee problem he'd had as a child?

Get used to the _babble_?

Davik heard the chatter in his ears, and paused, straightening. Voices all around him, whispering on the wind. They sensed his disquiet. They offered him anything he could possibly want, in exchange for this, or that. Roots, or tree-leaves, or shiny holy, or sun-in-the-bottle, or a thousand other things he could never understand and didn't wish to. The voices poured over one another, overlapped each other, babbled long strings of nonsensical syllables at him purely to override the others. He heard them fight and barter with one another for his services, scream at each other that they needed him more...

"Be QUIET!" He roared, and the voices stopped. They would start again, and they would start soon. They never stopped for long, and never long enough for him to _sleep_.

He did not bother to dress, not that he had anything but tattered rags anymore. They had rotted away in the rain and been slashed at by twigs and were itchy now. More often than not, the wolfen simply roamed naked. He eschewed the shelter, willing his mind to remain focused on his goal. He sat in front of the fire pit, crossed his legs, and cleared his mind, the vixen's weapons upon his lap. A few stubborn spirits still offered him more. Their forms, their power, their favors at a later date, but he silenced them with a growl, and concentrated deeper still.

They had to help. They just had to.

She had to have some way to keep sane, and the spirits said her weapons were powerful enough to protect her. How else had she lasted this long? He had to pry the knowledge from them, learn how they were made, learn how to make his own.

He felt the weapons in his lap, felt the faint echo of the sleeping spirits inside them, felt their presence faintly in his mind, and frowned deeper and deeper as they resisted his tugs upon their essences, as he tried to tug them from their dormant sleep within the wood and metal of the bow and knife. He must have spent an hour trying, but he was resolute, and refused to let his concentration break, no matter how many times the voices would interrupt.

So focused was he that he did not hear her approaching.

A chill went up his spine, and his hackles bristled, his eyes flying open. At first he thought he had felt the rush of one of the weapons' spirits waking against his mind, but the sudden pressure he felt upon his entire body dashed any hope of that. Feeling a sense of instinctive dread that only comes when one feels their very essence under attack, he sprung to his feet, but his muscles twitched just as he locked his knees upright, and though he tried to reach for the knife now at his feet, his body would not obey him. He heard laughter on the wind. He was paralyzed from head to toe, locked like a statue standing upright. His eyes drifted back and forth frantically before settling on a shape emerging out of the morning mist of the forest, a lithe gray wolf slowly padding it's way towards him, eyes gold and mischievious.

'It's her.' He felt dread settle through his dead limbs. He called on the spirits he had made deals with in the past, begging them to help, begging them not to be quiet, he needed them now, he would do anything. His gut slowly turned to ice as he felt them hover out of range, just outside the grasp of his mind, unwilling to approach him. He heard nothing in his mind save the laughter of the spirit that was locking his body. None were willing to cross the witch to serve him. 'I'm going to die.'

The vixen-turned-wolf approached him, circled him once. Davik swallowed heavily, relieved that he could at least do that, and waited for the killing blow from behind. He was surprised when, instead of hot fangs, he felt something cold press into his rear. Had his muscles worked, he would have jumped. His eyes tracked her as she came into view, as she sat down in front of him, and he was confused. Was she not angry?

An involuntary shudder went through his seized muscles as she began to lick at him, her long, powerful wolven tongue caressing his exposed genitalia. His shaft began to poke from his sheathe almost immediately, and Meredith nuzzled it, sniffing it, before beginning to lick along it's underside, encouraging it to grow. She traced her nose from the base to the tip, her tongue following afterwards relentlessly, over and over, assaulting the underside with lick after lick. A throaty groan escaped his sealed lips. If he could have, he would have howled out of sheer pleasure and frustration from the she-wolf's affections.

'To each in kind, as we are treated.' Meredith's voice was at his ears, as if upon the wind. It was in his mind, the same as any spirit. 'It is a lesson you will learn well among the spirits. Return the favor, good or ill. That is the only law that the wild respects.'

Davik stared dumbly at her, suddenly feeling the spirit in his body leave him. He breathed heavily, nearly falling over his own legs as he was suddenly in control of them again, but Meredith simply adjusted her position and kept attacking his exposed shaft. He gripped the sides of her head, rubbed her ears, stroked over her powerful upper back, lost to passion, and cried out into the still morning when it was finally too much. His seed splattered over Meredith's wolven body, into the fire pit, and beyond, and she still licked him until he had no more to give. When the white spots in his eyes stopped swimming enough for him to see, she was a vixen again, her arms wrapped around his neck, and he felt her kiss him passionately.

She bored him to the ground, a task that was made easier by his shaking knees, and sat upon his abdomen, letting his still-twitching organ slide between the cleft of her bare rump, her hands upon his chest, looming over him and grinning, naked and entirely in control, a queen of the forest.

He met her gaze, and he knew that he would have precious little time to rest.

--

"Why?" The words met Davik's ears just as he was drifting off from sheer exhaustion and pleasure in the afterglow of their latest escapade. At some point, they had moved to inside his hut to shelter from an early morning rainshower, which he did not remember starting but was nonetheless drizzling gently upon the leaves and the mortared roof of the hut. She was in his arms again, this time with him as the submissive one, the vixen nestled in atop him, laying on his chest. Even as she shifted to ask, he could feel her nipples gently rub against his bare chest. Even as she decided to open a dialogue, she was ready to go again. Her endurance was phenomenal.

"I..." He stumbled for words as he looked into her piercing eyes, returned to conciousness simply by the directness of her gaze. "I... would have returned them. I just needed... I needed to know how you did it."

"Did what?" She asked, with curiousity, tilting her head.

"How you... how you slept with all the noise. How you kept them from babbling at you all the time." The words left him in a rush, and he left his mouth hanging open, more than a little afraid and awestruck of what she might do to him.

Her lips twisted into a grin. "Is that what you think they do?" She laughed, nuzzling his neck. "They are worthless for that. The simple fact is, Davik... I don't."

"You... don't?"

"It is maddening, isn't it? Yet there is nothing maddening that will not eventually become normal. Your mind will grow quiet despite the noise you are aware all around you. You will tune it out." The vixen turned slightly in his arms to look out the doorway, at the pounding rain outside. "Just like the raindrops."

Davik was silent as his hands involuntarily played over the vixen's body, only to find himself grasping at air a moment later as she left him, standing. She began to walk outside into the rain, turning her head back to him just before crossing the threshold of the open doorway, and fixed him with another grin.

"If you have that much trouble sleeping, then perhaps you should follow my scent again." With a swish of her tail, the nude vixen strode out into the rain, gathered up her knife and bow, and was gone into the rain.

Davik pulled himself up into a sitting position and stared after her. He felt like bellowing in frustration to the pouring sky, but instead he simply sat. He sat and watched into the rain a long time, as if the naked vixen would dance into view behind a pair of trees, but she did not reappear. Slowly, the frustration lost it's relevance, and was replaced with a deep calm. The buzz of the spirits was still omnipresent in his ears, all around him, but it seemed to hold less importance now. Somehow, he had found his center.

She was right. It was just like the rain.

He tuned out the babble of the spirits and felt his conciousness drift into relaxation, images of his family, his village, his home, all playing through his mind. The thoughts felt distant. He knew he would cherish them forever, but he realized then that none of it had any relevance in the strange world he had awoken to. He would visit them. He would visit them often. He would learn to take the form of a bird and watch them from the treetops, or perhaps he would simply show up one day, uninvited, to leave a gift upon their door and leave before anyone would question him. He would remind them that he was alive.

And Meredith...

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and the attraction wasn't just physical. She was wiser than he, confident, flippant. She seemed to know a thousand times more than he about the strange new world he had found himself in. She was the only one who could have possibly provided him with guidance.

And she wasn't his.

She belonged to nobody.

Then he was struck by a realization. Neither did he.

The wolf strode out naked into the rain, and began to run.