JokerValentine
We Out
Context: Greetings all! Recently, I've been active on another community. I wrote this post recently that I felt rather proud of. I can't name the community for you all, but it's a rather detailed wolf community comprised of people I knew from a while back. I had a character killed off (Stercus) by a group of rival wolves. These rival wolves, known as The Alrekr, wished to expand territories. Stercus, a younger wolf and student under my other character (Joseph), was bold (or foolish) enough to refuse the orders of an Alrekr wolf: join their cause. As a result, he was killed. This following scene takes place some time later, during a funeral with other wolves gathered. I hope you enjoy!
The rains relented just long enough for the assembly to inter their dead. The small crowd of mostly greyed wolves had very little words to speak, for the sight of the body was speechless. The bones of Stercus had earned their place in the very same space inhabited by all of the great wolves, the ones that Joseph admired and deemed worthy of honor. Seventeen plots lay in the tract of land beside the house, that decrepit and foul land that nobody would dare attempt to conquer. Markus Chimbley was laid to rest there, alas was Jurin and Daniel Chimbley, Bella and Storm Chimbley, Bandet x., and many whose names are now lost. This once beautiful plot of land was prone now to the corrupted rot of fleeting flesh, running off into the stream to the land's South. Such was the honor that befell the dead. Joseph, the last of those who had the heart to remember this land, took before the assembly to say a few words.
"It is hard as it is to grieve for the dead. To admire Stercus for who he was... it is not easy to do when you wish for him to still be alive. It is not the hardest thing I have to do. The hardest thing I have ever had to do, is to stand before you, so many wolves (though there were not that many) that perhaps had heard the name of Stercus, knew his tale, and took pity on his fate. To be able to recount how I feel in public is more a trial than it is to solemnly weep in solitude."
"There were days that many of you do not remember. We call them the Dark Ages, the Archaic Times, all sorts of things. They were the days of vicious tyrants, of blind loyalty to an ideal of destruction, of giving in to darkness and to gluttony and to sin. Stercus was born of that stock, that heritage of tyranny. His father, as you may recall, never loved him. His mother saw him as a runt the same, only feigning any sort of affection for him. He was left for dead, starved, he came to me."
"To think that he did not follow in the glorious gore of his father may seem like an opportunity missed. The power he could have had is tempting. He didn't want that, however. Never before did a wolf find it so satisfying to be average, to be low to the ground. To have him be given that treatment literally breaks my heart."
"Tell me, how many of you have ever loved? Stercus had not yet even found that. The tragedy is not that he died, but that he lived without filling his heart with the sentiments of affection for anyone. I could have given him everything in the world, and it would still not be enough. He thought that he ought to find a young fae, to take her off her paws with his words of doting affection, and soon be able to be called a real father. Not a tyrant that abused his own son, or devoured them, or left them to the wilderness. But to break away from his family's archaic tradition."
"That tradition, that we pride ourselves. on being so far away from, it has not returned. We turned your backs on it for far too long. In that moment of opportunity, an unrestrained evil has emerged again. If I were to call Savaria my house, it would never be my home. We are never safe. We may run far and wide over the mountains, but it will never be far enough to escape it. You know what I talk about. Those wolves, their eyes nothing but voided darkness, their fangs of molten steel as they tear into our throats."
"I told Stercus this, riled him with these beliefs, and in some attempt to show he was not as cowardly as his father to leads and to rise up, he opposed one of these tyrants. This Nassor looked this child in his eyes, past what wrongs he suffered, and when Stercus' head was unbowed, he paid the price of freedom. They told him me may join or to die, but this delusional menace does not know that to join his cult is to die."
"We are wolves, yes, but our spirits are no animal. Everything that lives has some spirit. Tis wolf wished to pry Stercus' spirit from his chest, to take him in and have the boy call him "father." He wished to lap Stercus' soul up like a pond water, to soak his blood-stained disease-ridden maw in his uncorrupted pond of personality. And while we sit here holding his bones, wishing for them to not be his, they are out there."
"We have been silent to these evils. They invade these lands, they pillage the Earth, claiming what will never be theirs. The land we reside on, much like the soul, can never be taken. Our silence ought not to serve as their consent. We have allowed these Alrekr fiends to set up no pack, not even a cult but a business. We invest our children and ourselves to them, and our return is our ashes and bones. They wish to war for what they will never have and what we have: our autonomy. Is our silence and our submission worth the life of one good child?"
"Reject these Alrekr fiends, friends. Reject those tyrants too that are of the spawn Stercus escaped from, that malicious Invictus pack. Take stock of what you wish more, your freedom and your family, or your servitude. If you came here to honor Stercus, whose bones fill the last plot, honor his sacrifice. If you wish to remember his sacrifice, remember the olden times, those Dark Ages. Do not fall victim to these hounds, do not consent to their murder of children. Think of Stercus as your own child, as he was but mine."
They buried his bones in the last available plot, and the assembly dispersed.
The rains relented just long enough for the assembly to inter their dead. The small crowd of mostly greyed wolves had very little words to speak, for the sight of the body was speechless. The bones of Stercus had earned their place in the very same space inhabited by all of the great wolves, the ones that Joseph admired and deemed worthy of honor. Seventeen plots lay in the tract of land beside the house, that decrepit and foul land that nobody would dare attempt to conquer. Markus Chimbley was laid to rest there, alas was Jurin and Daniel Chimbley, Bella and Storm Chimbley, Bandet x., and many whose names are now lost. This once beautiful plot of land was prone now to the corrupted rot of fleeting flesh, running off into the stream to the land's South. Such was the honor that befell the dead. Joseph, the last of those who had the heart to remember this land, took before the assembly to say a few words.
"It is hard as it is to grieve for the dead. To admire Stercus for who he was... it is not easy to do when you wish for him to still be alive. It is not the hardest thing I have to do. The hardest thing I have ever had to do, is to stand before you, so many wolves (though there were not that many) that perhaps had heard the name of Stercus, knew his tale, and took pity on his fate. To be able to recount how I feel in public is more a trial than it is to solemnly weep in solitude."
"There were days that many of you do not remember. We call them the Dark Ages, the Archaic Times, all sorts of things. They were the days of vicious tyrants, of blind loyalty to an ideal of destruction, of giving in to darkness and to gluttony and to sin. Stercus was born of that stock, that heritage of tyranny. His father, as you may recall, never loved him. His mother saw him as a runt the same, only feigning any sort of affection for him. He was left for dead, starved, he came to me."
"To think that he did not follow in the glorious gore of his father may seem like an opportunity missed. The power he could have had is tempting. He didn't want that, however. Never before did a wolf find it so satisfying to be average, to be low to the ground. To have him be given that treatment literally breaks my heart."
"Tell me, how many of you have ever loved? Stercus had not yet even found that. The tragedy is not that he died, but that he lived without filling his heart with the sentiments of affection for anyone. I could have given him everything in the world, and it would still not be enough. He thought that he ought to find a young fae, to take her off her paws with his words of doting affection, and soon be able to be called a real father. Not a tyrant that abused his own son, or devoured them, or left them to the wilderness. But to break away from his family's archaic tradition."
"That tradition, that we pride ourselves. on being so far away from, it has not returned. We turned your backs on it for far too long. In that moment of opportunity, an unrestrained evil has emerged again. If I were to call Savaria my house, it would never be my home. We are never safe. We may run far and wide over the mountains, but it will never be far enough to escape it. You know what I talk about. Those wolves, their eyes nothing but voided darkness, their fangs of molten steel as they tear into our throats."
"I told Stercus this, riled him with these beliefs, and in some attempt to show he was not as cowardly as his father to leads and to rise up, he opposed one of these tyrants. This Nassor looked this child in his eyes, past what wrongs he suffered, and when Stercus' head was unbowed, he paid the price of freedom. They told him me may join or to die, but this delusional menace does not know that to join his cult is to die."
"We are wolves, yes, but our spirits are no animal. Everything that lives has some spirit. Tis wolf wished to pry Stercus' spirit from his chest, to take him in and have the boy call him "father." He wished to lap Stercus' soul up like a pond water, to soak his blood-stained disease-ridden maw in his uncorrupted pond of personality. And while we sit here holding his bones, wishing for them to not be his, they are out there."
"We have been silent to these evils. They invade these lands, they pillage the Earth, claiming what will never be theirs. The land we reside on, much like the soul, can never be taken. Our silence ought not to serve as their consent. We have allowed these Alrekr fiends to set up no pack, not even a cult but a business. We invest our children and ourselves to them, and our return is our ashes and bones. They wish to war for what they will never have and what we have: our autonomy. Is our silence and our submission worth the life of one good child?"
"Reject these Alrekr fiends, friends. Reject those tyrants too that are of the spawn Stercus escaped from, that malicious Invictus pack. Take stock of what you wish more, your freedom and your family, or your servitude. If you came here to honor Stercus, whose bones fill the last plot, honor his sacrifice. If you wish to remember his sacrifice, remember the olden times, those Dark Ages. Do not fall victim to these hounds, do not consent to their murder of children. Think of Stercus as your own child, as he was but mine."
They buried his bones in the last available plot, and the assembly dispersed.
