Fondest Dreams Ch. 02

Zsálya's wolf was not interested in the details that Willi had explained, but she accepted Zsálya's assurance that Willi's magic, at least, had nothing at all to do with demons, and that Willi was not evil. The wolf remained wary, but at least she was calm now.

The moment ended when Zsálya fairly launched herself at Willi and wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly enough to trouble his breathing. "I am so glad," she told him, her voice muffled by his tunic. "You are the first... only... friend I have ever had," she admitted. "I do not wish to lose you."

It took a moment for Willi to get past his shock at her revelation. Then he wrapped his strong arms around the little wolf and held her tightly, stroking her silken black hair. "Come now, every child has playmates, especially in a community as close as a Were pack. Have you never been close with anyone?" he asked gently.

"My sister, my father, my grandmother," Zsálya replied, resting her cheek against Willi's shoulder. "No-one else."

Willi took her by the shoulders and eased her back so he could look into her lovely blue eyes. "Why?"

She dropped her eyes and shook her head.

"Zsálya." Willi slipped a finger under her chin and gently urged her gaze back up to his. "From the first moment I saw you, I have felt a shadow upon your kind heart and seen a great sadness in your pretty eyes. I will not judge, mein kleiner Wolf. I will not laugh. I will not leave. I wish only to help you. Please, will you not tell me what troubles you?"

"I... cannot." Tears glimmered in Zsálya's eyes, and her small hands tightened upon the front of his tunic. "You cannot help me. Nothing can. Thank you, though," she whispered. "You are very kind."

"There is very little I cannot do, especially with help from my... comrades. You need but trust me." Willi kept his voice gentle, and resisted the temptation to dig into his friend's mind. In the absence of a clear danger, his principles forced him to respect her wishes.

Zsálya shook her head again, more emphatically. "I may not speak about what troubles me to anyone outside of my pack." Her voice was quiet, but her tone was clear: she would say no more. "Please, just stay with me and be my friend, Willi," she begged him. "That will mean more than you can know."

Willi responded by pulling her back into his embrace, resting his cheek against her hair and rubbing her back through the simple garment she wore. "I will," he promised. "I am here for you, mein freund. Always."

They embraced for quite some time, as Willi explained the basics of magic to a fascinated Zsálya. The revelations also seemed to set her wolf more at ease. When they eventually parted she slipped her arm around his, and they began to walk aimlessly through her snowbound forest. "What is this sign that you wear?" she asked him, brushing her free hand over the large blue star on his tunic.

"It is the sign of my Order, the Knights of the Azure Star," Willi replied. "I have told you of our purpose before, though I did not use the name. We try to maintain a low profile, and so do not usually wear our uniforms out and about." He grinned as his long tunic became solid green.

"Are you all mages? How many are you? Do you ride white horses?"

Willi found Zsálya's eagerness endearing, but he was bound to secrecy on certain matters just as she was. "I know how to ride a horse, yes," he replied with a smile, "though I do not keep one of my own. The Order has members from many species, but humans predominate. As for the rest... we do not speak about the details of our membership and abilities. Part of keeping the peace is being an intimidating presence, mein Prinzess, and all beings fear most that which they do not know. By being enigmatic, we make ourselves more intimidating, which helps us to keep the peace. Do you follow?"

"No, I do not. Why would you seek to scare your friends?" Zsálya raised an eyebrow at Wilhelm.

Wilhelm gave her a wry smile. "Who said they were our friends? You may be my friend, mein kleiner Wolf, but your pack and even the Werewolf Council are not my friends. Especially the latter, not with that schwein in charge. The same goes for the Vatican, the Star Chamber, the Five Towers, other Weres, the Vampire Primogen, the Dwarven Elder Council, the Elven Summer Conclave, the dragons... et cetera. And that is just in Europe. The Order maintains a presence in every part of the world."

It gave Zsálya pause to hear him speak so matter-of-factly about beings she had thought the stuff of cubs' tales, and about many entities of whom she had never heard at all. "If... they are not your friends, then what are they?"

"A pack of preening, idiotic pups who we must keep from biting each other and from killing off the local rabbits. Or so it feels on many days."

Zsálya knew of the Werewolf Council, of course, and hearing her friend dismiss the wisest Werewolves in Europe as 'idiotic pups' angered her. "So you and the other knights are the pack elders, here to keep the stupid cubs in line, is that it?" she asked, putting more bite into her tone than she had intended.

Willi blinked at her, then snorted. "Hardly. If it were so, they might actually listen to us more often. No, we are the awkward, clumsy adolescents who have been charged with watching the cubs and keeping them all safe." He grinned, clearly comfortable with laughing at himself. "Though we do not always know quite what we are doing, we know our duty and do the best we can."

"So... who are the pack elders, then?" Zsálya's tone was calm and curious once more; Willi's self-deprecating manner was most disarming.

Surprisingly, he shook his head and patted her hand. "That is quite a question. The shortest possible answer is: God. And no, I am not in the mood to discuss theology tonight. Ask me some other time, when you wish for a very long and very confusing conversation."

Zsálya considered his words, and accepted them with good grace. "In any case," she finally replied, her tone light and playful, "I think you are very good at being scary, Willi."

He chuckled. "You are not going to forgive me for frightening you, are you?"

"Well... maybe, if you are very nice to me..." She wasn't upset anymore, of course, but she was overcome by the urge to tease her handsome friend, to make him squirm just a tiny bit. Is it usual to feel this way towards a friend?

Willi threw back his head and laughed. "Frauen! No matter the species, you females are all the same!" He slipped his arm out of hers for a moment to ruffle her long black hair.

"Beautiful and perfect?" she asked, twirling away from him and smiling coyly over her shoulder.

"Evil!" Willi's charming grin made it quite clear he was only teasing. "Now, I have another question for you, if I may."

"Surely." Still smiling warmly, she came back towards him and held out a hand.

Willi took it and raised it to his lips, letting his polite kiss linger just a moment too long. "Who was the woman who visited earlier?" he asked, still holding her hand. "Was she another dreamwalker?"

"She... is my grandmother, Leona," Zsálya told him, her voice hesitant. "I think I must have dreamed a likeness of her, to comfort me."

"No, she was not a dream. Has she ever spoken to you in dreams before?"

"Never. I have always been alone, except for..." she shivered, thinking of the Werewolf who haunted her dreams, and who would one day kill her in the waking world.

Willi stepped closer and slipped his arms around her waist. "Your grandmother is not a Werewolf, is she?" he asked gently.

Zsálya's head jerked up as if she had been shocked. "What? She... of course she is a wolf!" she protested. It tore at her to lie to her friend, but Father had been most clear: like her visions, she was not to speak of Grandmother's panther-self to anyone outside the pack. She could not disobey her alpha in this, or the pack's survival would be endangered.

Instead of arguing, Willi just stared down at her, his gorgeous blue eyes seeming to see right through her. Somehow, it was worse than if he had called her a liar. Nonetheless, Zsálya met his gaze stubbornly, determined to protect those she loved, even from her well-meaning human friend.

After a full minute, Willi sighed and ran a hand over Zsálya's cheek, which sent a tiny shiver down her spine. "It seems that you must hold your secrets, and I must hold mine," he observed before leaning down to brush his lips across her forehead.

They turned their conversation to other matters, and quickly rediscovered the comfortable rhythm they had enjoyed for the past ten days.

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{More from Archangel_M: Most of the entities Willi mentions you can figure out well enough on your own, but in the spirit of mercy I will explain two of them. The Star Chamber is a council comprised of delegates from the various Protestant churches in Europe, empowered to act for the member churches "in all matters extraordinary and daemonic," formed about twenty years after the Reformation. The Five Towers are five ancient human 'colleges' of magic that usually present a united front to the rest of the world. Almost every non-Order mage worthy of the term has spent at least some time studying at one or another of them. Each 'tower' has a specialty: fire, water, earth, air, and healing.

As for the rest... yes, Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than you can shake a stick at, in addition to all the chaos caused by humans. Weres keep to themselves for a reason.}