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I whimpered to myself as I slowly opened my eyes, blinking sleepily as I looked around the still lit living room for what had woken me up. I felt stiff and uncomfortable, partially from falling asleep on the sofa, and partially from what I had endured in the hours before. An insistent knock came from the front door and I slowly remembered why I had been waiting up, uneasily working my footpaws down from the sofa seat to the floor in order to get up and get myself moving. The fur of my inner thighs felt stiff and uncomfortable as I finally managed to stand, still feeling the effects of sleep as I wobbled my way to the steps down to the front door. I considered for a moment that I was in nothing remotely resembling a presentable state to entertain guests, still dressed in nothing but a half buttoned thin white sleeveless blouse and short red skirt bunched up around my waist. It hardly seemed to matter after all I'd been through tonight, though I did take a moment to tug my skirt back down for at least a bit of modesty before reaching a paw out to open the door.

Thankfully just as I had expected, I found Max waiting outside on the front steps, offering me a kind smile with the politeness not to look down over my body as he stood waiting patiently for me. The rotund otter, well dressed as always in an overcoat and tall winter boots, was holding a coffee in one paw with large old book under his arm as he looked to me expectantly. "Oh umm.. come in" I offered, stepping back and opening the door wider for him and allowing him to step inside. "Thank you Valentine" he said courteously as he came in from the cold and made his way up the stairs. I closed the door behind him, shivering at the cold night air that had been let in and followed along behind, my sore fennec body demanding that I sit back down. As I caught up with him, Max placed the coffee in my paws and put the book down on the sofa before slipping out of his overcoat and folding it over the back of a nearby chair. As he sat down I gratefully thanked Max for the coffee, a welcome comfort I had not asked him for on the phone earlier when I had called him for help in desperation, relaying scattered parts of the story of what had happened earlier that night, which he seemed to understand all too well. I winced as also I sat down with an uncomfortable aching sigh next to the old book in the place I had been sleeping on the sofa. The book looked quite thick and old I thought as I took a drink of the warm coffee and looked it over, its solid blue cover appearing quite worn with age. It seemed especially curious to me as books such as this were somewhat rare objects. Most 'books' as they were still called, were read from computer screens in one form or another, and provided clips of video, three dimensional images, links to references, special annotations, and other such imbedded information that would hardly be possible on simple bound stacks of paper. I had heard that paper books were something more common a long time ago, when there were all kinds of problems with computers and not everyone even had electricity, but those were mostly just stories as history on the whole was not a commonly studied subject among furs.

"That will answer all your questions, if you really want them answered." said Max as he watched me looking over the curious old book. "What is it?" I asked, seeing no title or emblem of any kind. Max took a deep breath and sighed, leaning back in his chair. "It's about wolves" he said, looking up at the ceiling as if it were far away. "What.. do you mean 'if' I want them answered?" I asked, looking up to him cautiously as this was very unlike the Max I thought I knew. "Some things are better left forgotten" he said, nodding to himself as he rubbed the digits of his right paw together. "I don't think I understand" I answered hesitantly, quite puzzled by his evasive responses. "Have you ever seen a white wolf before, other than Angie?" he asked, looking back down to me and leaning forward in his chair. I thought about it a moment. Of course I had seen furs of all sorts of colors, dyes being quite popular to make even unnatural patterns commonplace, though all the wolves I could recall were some form of gray or black, with maybe a little brown here and there, but not white except for Angie. "Umm, I guess not?" I said, tilting my head to the side unsure why it should be important. "If you read this, you must never tell another fur" he said in quite a serious tone as he gestured to the book, which I picked up and turned about in my paws. "Even Angie?" I asked as I felt along the rough texture of the book's cover with my pawpads, looking up and down its unmarked surface. "She already knows." he said with a detached expression. "The wolves know. They remember, so the rest of us don't have to." Max sat back in his chair again as if considering what to do. He seemed older somehow, far too serious compared to what I had grown to expect over the course of many visits to his home and the bustling lascivious parties that normally took place there. "Did you write this?" I asked him, slowly opening the cover and taking a peek. "Turn to where I've left the marker for you and read from there" he said, gesturing with his paw toward me. I found the red tassel and turned passed a large section of the book to where it lay between the pages. "Echo and Eclipse, Sons of the White Wolf" I read, looking back up to Max puzzled. "Angie?" I asked, suddenly quite confused. "Before Angie" he answered, "Before any of us."

"A long time ago things were very different." Max said in a rather ominous tone. "We needed the wolves once, during the dark time when all the lights went out except for the sun and the stars, and the moon. They're the reason we're still here, and that's why they're the ones still waiting until we need them again." "Need them for what?" I asked, still perplexed by his explanation. "Let's hope it never comes to that." he said rather flatly, "Keep reading." The words I had read were in large print, about the center of the page. Below near the bottom in small italicized lettering the writing continued. "And when the darkness falls, the sons of the white wolf will silence the machines, and rise to change the stars." "But what does it mean?" I asked, reading over the words again to myself. "It means this is the story of the wolves" Max answered slowly, "The answers to all your questions are there." "But why can't I start at the beginning?" I asked, looking at how far into the book I had skipped to reach the marker. "That book starts at the beginning, the very beginning." he said solemnly, "There are things in those pages, things that should have stayed buried. We're better off not remembering where we came from, it's better not to let it determine who we are." I shivered a little as I turned the pages back to look at where the book began. "On The First Day" I read the title of the first page silently to myself. "You don't need to know all of that." he said, watching me look through the pages. "But I suppose if you read the story of the wolves you will have a lot of questions." Max looked me over for a moment, causing me to blush at being closely inspected in my rather disheveled state, but I could sense Max was considering more than just my appearance. "I won't try to talk you out of it" he said finally, "there is no more warning I can give you without telling you the story myself, and if you're going to learn its better you learn from the book than from me."

"So you didn't write this?" I asked again, curious to know how Max came to own such a book. "My father" he said, gesturing to the book, "he was part of an expedition out into the great desert many years ago and they found something, something very old. He couldn't keep it of course, or any copies or recordings of what he found, so he wrote it all down in secret and later assembled his scraps of notes into that book." "What happened to him" I asked in an unintentionally soft voice, holding the book trepidatiously in my paws. "It made him rich" Max said, only half smiling, "but he was never quite the same after that. For a while he went to live with the wolves, but even that didn't help after what he learned. Eventually he compiled all his notes into that book and gave it to me before he left again. I've never seen him since." "Max I'm sorry" I whimpered softly, seeing his obvious strain at relaying the events. "Why are you sharing this with me?" I asked, closing the cover and running my paw over the surface of the book again. "You care about Angie quite a lot don't you?" he asked, offering me a slight smile. Angie and I had of course become very close since I had moved in, even more so since her former mate had left her. It wasn't exactly what I would call a relationship, but I had become quite fond of her and was terribly distressed by her recent change of disposition after what the events of earlier that night had put her through. "Yes" I said nervously, sharing my feelings through my tone and expression as I looked up at Max who nodded back at me. "You're going to have to make a choice Valentine" he said, leaning forward in his chair. "You can put that book down and go curl up in your warm bed and try and forget all this ever happened, but in the morning Angie will be gone, and you may never see her again. Or you can read that book, and once you understand what she has to do, you can come with her when I take her away."

I blinked in surprise as I listened to Max's words. I knew Angie's mood was serious but I never imagined she would ever go so far as to leave. I couldn't just leave on a whim either, this was my home, I moved here to start a life for myself, but what kind of home would it be without Angie? I whimpered and looked down at the floor. "I'm sharing this with you because I think she needs you." Max said, drawing my gaze back up to meet his. "This is going to be a difficult time for her, and it would be a difficult time for you as well if you decided to stay by her side through it. She would never ask you herself of course, and I can't ask you on her behalf, not without you knowing why. What I can do is offer you this story and tell you that if you choose to read it, you will understand, and I'm sorry to say that if you do, your understanding of the world will never be the same again, but this is the only way." I looked down at the book again, feeling it seem to grow heavier in my paws as if I was holding the weight of the past, and of my future with Angie between the covers of the old book. I was so tired, all I had to do was put it down and go to bed and this could all be like a bad dream. Or I could open the book, I could find out how to help my friend, even find out about all those wolfy secrets I had never understood. Then there was the story of the very beginning, a story that must have happened so long ago I thought no fur could possibly have known anymore. Still I had always wondered, every fur must have at some point, could I really pass that up, or was there more risk to these stories than I understood? I trembled and took a deep breath feeling my body grow hot with anxiety. What was I going to choose?