Side-Write: Light in the Dark

Spending so much time deep in the mechanical guts of this game, I've had a decent stretch of time to really try and figure out what PWO is going to be about, emotionally. The theme and the mechanics need to work together, and I think it's coming together to make it clear what one major theme will be: choosing not to hurt others. This is a game and a world where you can always hurt others, you can always be hurt, but making the choice for yourself what to do in various situations is what truly has meaning. I was thinking about this, and this story developed as a way to explore that a little. This is a probe in the direction of the "emotional center" of Project Wild One, or at least one aspect of it.

As always, this isn't something that officially "happens" in the world, but maybe something that could happen, depending on how things come together. I hope you find it an enjoyable read!

~~~

I'll never forget the first time I saw him.

It was morning, and the forest was just starting to sprout speckles of sunlight on trunks and shrubs where it managed to pierce the canopy at a wide angle. The shadows only seemed to grow deeper as the light grew brighter, and I felt half-blind as I stumbled over roots and grasped at trees to steady my stride. Then, when I stepped clear of a particularly rough trunk, I found myself locking eyes with one of those shadows.

Gleaming orbs, slit through and carved low under a heavy brow. I froze, and a terrible, bristling body slowly came into definition around those eyes. Massive. Rugged fur clinging to taut muscles each larger than any of my limbs. Fangs and claws longer than my fingers. He was like a wolf, one of the old four-legged ones they say used to roam the lands, but painted with the brush of a nightmare and taller at the shoulder than I am standing. And he was flexed to pounce, breath steaming from that rictus of daggers he bared at me.

Before I fully registered what I was looking at, still mid-stride, his face shifted. He... relaxed? Those slits staring at me widened, and his paws shifted to a different stance. Still ready to pounce. My instincts barely registered that I was facing absolute oblivion before instead deciding that I was prey, that I needed to flee. And somehow that was a relief?

My feet lurched around stupidly, trying to shove me backward, and I fell on my ass. He was over me before I managed to slap my hands into the dirt, and I snapped my eyes shut. The first bite was always the hardest.

But... it didn't come. I felt him snuffle over me, felt alternating gusts of hot and cold air as he dragged in my scent and puffed droplets across my fur. By the time I managed to work my eyes open, he was turning away. He was so relaxed now, he almost looked like a different creature.

I was dizzy for a moment, rattling with adrenaline from what might have been no more than five seconds of sudden, mortal terror, but I couldn't help staring after that great, dark form sauntering off into the woods again. I got my feet under me after a brief struggle and followed after him without even really thinking about it. I had to see more. I'd never seen a worg before, and I didn't know if I ever would again. This was exactly the sort of thing I was out here for.

He glanced back at me now and then, but didn't pay me much mind as he loped through the woods. Sometimes I had to run right out to keep up with him, and I'm sure he could have lost me if he wanted, but he didn't stop me chasing after him as he visited a stream for a drink, then descended into the darker, denser area of the woods. This was already deeper than I'd ever been, and I was shaking a little as I glanced around, feeling the oppression of the shadows thickening even as the sun rose. This might be a terrible idea, I knew, but I was in the full plunge now.

Eventually he slowed, and where a solitary pool of sunlight had nurtured a small patch of grass amidst the darkness under the canopy, he flopped down on the faintly steaming green to bask in the sun. His fur was a deep black from nose to tail tip, but the brilliant sunlight brought out a hint of silvery purple and revealed the dark gray of his hide beneath. And sprawled in the spotlight like this, finally relaxed, he was... beautiful. A taut, trim stretch of curved lines, bunched in great knots of muscle at key points. Lean, brutal power at rest, like a sledgehammer sitting on its head.

I just watched him for a while, panting for air. It had been a decent ways to cover in so short a time. When I managed to gather myself a little, I approached him slowly. His ear flicked at my movement, but otherwise he gave no response as my steps drew nearer. I had to swallow several times first, but I managed to speak, softly. He couldn't understand me, but I greeted him, and mumbled things about how he looked. I might have waxed poetic a little. He didn't respond, so I tried touching his flank. Still nothing. I knew he could kill me with barely an effort, but until then, I wanted to get a better look at... a real monster.

I'm so skinny, most creatures out here aren't much interested in eating me. That might be the only reason I was still alive, really. I told him about that as I stroked over his body, feeling that rough fur scratch at my palms. I told him how I'd gotten fired for having a bad attitude, for not putting up with customers being shitty. I told him I wasn't sure I was ready to... try again, to go back into that mess in the city. So I'd decided to take a little vacation, out here. Have a little fun. Maybe get fucked up a little. Maybe customers won't seem so bad after I get eviscerated a few times, who knows?

He reserved judgment, so I just kept talking. Rambling about how much work had sucked. My inept attempts at getting a girlfriend. My parents. I let my fingers sink through his fur. It was softer underneath! His hide was thick, and the outer fur was bristly and almost hard, but the undercoat was almost downy. I tried working his fur a little, and when it bunched up it made terrifying bristles, almost like a fan of daggers, and almost as unpleasant to touch. That must be what happened when he tensed. He'd looked like he was spiked all over! Now, though, it was strangely satisfying to stroke over, kinda like feeling sandpaper somehow stretch into fine fabric dotted with barbs under my touch. The only thing spoiling it was... the scars. He had long divides in his fur all over where he must have taken wounds before, sometimes more than a foot long. It was terrible to imagine what might have happened to him... but incredible to think he'd survived so much without even dying, to keep such marks.

Maybe it should have been more surprising he let me mess with him so much, touching him all over. I don't know. It felt right, somehow, and I was absorbed in touching him and rambling about my dumb life, letting my fingers spread over bristles, scars, and down with equal care.

I was mid-word when his body tensed, and a single massive paw planted in my gut, launching me through the air. I glimpsed him lunging to his feet as I tumbled, and I barely managed to land and pull my head up in time to see something blur down from the canopy, straight at him!

I couldn't even make out what it was that attacked him, it was something brown and maybe about the same size as him, a great tangle of limbs twisting to rake at him with claws as he bit into it and wrenched flesh from its bones. He threw it away, but the air blasted around it as it reversed course midair and dove into him again! He didn't have a single second to breathe, to gather himself, it was a terrifying, relentless mass of claws and feathers harrying him on every side even as he tore into it! Suddenly there was a terrible crunch, and the attacker shrieked. A bird? The worg managed to drag the thing to the ground, and though it sliced up his underbelly, he took its neck in his jaws and twisted. And it was done.

A mist of feathers lingered in the air as the body fell limp, and I could finally make sense of all those limbs. A gryphon! I'd never seen one fight, but that had been... Gods. I don't know if a dozen men with swords could have attacked so rapidly, so relentlessly. I might have thought nothing could survive such an onslaught, but here he was... feasting. My stomach turned, and I looked away.

The body soon disappeared, but it sounded like he'd managed to get his fill at least. That done, the beast took to licking his wounds. I... could see now, how he'd taken his scars. How many had he fought like this? How many times had he fought just that gryphon before? I hung back a while, just staring at him, uncertain if it was... wise to approach a wounded monster. Gods, his belly was a mess. It... hurt, to see him like this. The body I'd so admired, torn and bloodied.

He lapped at all the wounds he could. I've heard saliva can help wounds, and he certainly seemed to be counting on that. Well, if he'd survived this before, I supposed he should know what would work. After a time, though, he paused... and looked at me.

I was very still. He didn't rise, didn't move to come for me, just watched me, huffing a little. I approached slowly, uncertain, and let myself come within range of his... everything.

He didn't attack me. Instead, he twisted and made as if to lick at his back. He couldn't reach some of it, and when I moved around that side, I saw there were a few long gouges where the gryphon had clawed into him, still open and bleeding. I shuddered. He made as if to lick at them a few more times, and I swallowed. I doubted my tongue could do anything useful, and I couldn't imagine myself... doing that. But...?

After thinking it over a moment, I reached up slowly. Toward his mouth. It was a cage of terrible fangs, barely parted to let slip a long, floppy tongue. I reached for that, more than slowly enough to let him stop me, but after a moment, he answered by slurping over my hand... and most of my arm. I shivered a little, even as a certain heat lurched up low in my belly unbidden. That felt... um... weird. But I had what I needed, and I lowered my slobbery arm to... carefully... rub over his wound. He snarled a little, but huffed impatiently when I stopped, so I kept going. I had to struggle not to shake, not to make it worse for him, as his rent flesh ran under my fingers.

I felt tears dripping from my chin by the time I ran out of slobber to use, and reached up again. He licked the blood off me and left a fresh mess, which I spread around on the rest. It was... the strangest, most intimate thing I think I have ever done. He entrusted his most sensitive, inflamed flesh to me, for me to touch with my bare hands. In that moment, I could have hurt him so easily, so deeply, but he... I guess he must have trusted me. Maybe he just didn't have a better option, but with my fingers spread over his puckering wounds, I felt... I don't know. Connected? I felt like maybe we understood each other just a little, maybe we shared something... special. I'm... sorry. It's hard to explain, and to this day I don't even know what all those strange feelings rushing through me then were.

But I know that when I finished, and an invisible tension finally drained from his immense body spread before me, I felt... good. I felt amazing. I'd actually been able to... ease his pain, when he needed it most. I'd done some tiny bit to help patch a great beauty of a beast back together again. I'd... helped someone, in a way that really mattered. I don't really know if that's why I started crying against him. Mostly I remember his fur scratched like hell against my face, but I couldn't stop clinging to him until it was all out of me.

A lot has happened to me since then. Since I left the forest. I've found love, and a better job. I've met other beasts, and wild folk. But I will never forget seeing that face in the shadows, and I'll never forget how I felt when he bared his wounds to me and I helped him, when I was at the lowest, darkest point of my own life. I'd gone out there to taste the savagery and the suffering of the deep woods, but I'd found a whisper of kindness in a monster, and in myself. And that meant more than any smile, any laugh or any kiss I've tasted since. I hold that always in my heart. The warm, bright spot in the dark.