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Full Moon Rising

Tonight, the moon is calling.

When the time of the Fae in this world was at its fullest, we of the wolf-body would hold great hunts and revels in the name of One Who Waxes Powerful, One Who Makes Us Strong. When the moon was full we felt the truth of our blood strongest, and we sang many songs to her in that night in thanks. Magickless man cringed in terror, and told stories of past misfortunes as they huddled in their dwellings; wise they were, for in those days, we allowed ourselves to go drunk on the white light that blessed us, and tore into anything that crossed our paths.

The Wolves-- our shape-brothers-- hated us in those days. It was they who suffered and died for our frenzies, and they laugh at us now, few in the world of man, outcast from our kind that has long moved out of the realm of this earth. If they catch a wolf-bodied Fae alone while they are many, they waste no time in murdering him immediately. For our power has weakened as our number has dwindled, and the moon is veiled in smog and filth too often, and our power-songs are fewer and fewer each year.

It is lonely, yes, and we have become reclusive and territorial in our exile. To find another of the wolf-body is an even gamble between death and brotherhood or mating. The scent of another skin-changer drives us mad with instinctive regret and longing, for though we ourselves did not live in the days of our greatest power, our blood remembers. For some this leads to frenzied mating and hunting; for others, it leads to a need to drive the other away or to kill him, and suffocate the pain and want.

In my time on this earth I have met five others, and that is many for one of my years. The first one I killed, but it was he who caused me to seek out the others: for my family were Keepers of Secrets, but I had not believed the Secrets they told. Upon seeing him I knew what they spoke to be truth, and I wanted to gather the Pack; but though i found the others, and have mated twice and escaped murder narrowly two other times, none would run with me, and all had turned their back to the waxing of the full moon. This was a world of Television and Internet and Computers, they told me. Stocks and Bonds, and Cars, and Guns. What significance was Fae blood, and the changing of one's skin? They walked as men and abandoned the shape of the Wolf, even on the night of the full moon. They would mate with man and thin their blood until it was nothing but memory. They would forget the power-songs and when they died, they would lay down as men and refuse their soul-form even at their return to the earth.

But my heart will not let me forget. I am proud and my blood is old, and one day I will find another who will Run at my side and howl the old songs to the full belly of the Moon.