>>5976781“No, I’m no quitter! But… Well…”
She looks out the window, setting down her pencil, and you see that in the margins she has drawn large-headed, wide-eared figures in the margins, some with swords and some with horns and hooves. So too a recognizable facsimile of a certain broad-shouldered, moustachioed mutual friend.
“How is the big guy, anyway?” Testa asks, following your gaze and then looking back up at you.
“Well, about that…”
It’s been months now since Pearce (your childhood friend and a Guardian of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower) and Oncyth (a lycanthropically-accursed elf you made your ally) agreed to ambush an agent of the Forces of Darkness on your behalf. You’d called it off, but Oncyth had held you to your word—that his participation would finally clear his ‘life-debt’ to you, incurred when you saved him from Unseelie slavery. In his curt way, with few words, the werewolf had conveyed that it was a matter of some urgency, and that he had no interest in haggling the terms and conditions of his emancipation form your service. You hadn’t been terribly bothered to retain him, mind you: you like him fine, but you value freedom.
The problem, of course, was PEARCE liked him more.
Logan Pearce is a heavyset and muscular blonde human man, the product of the farms outside Hawksong, magically-gifted but also gifted in strength and stature by that breeding and upbringing. He is also, ahem, a man of the sort who prefers the company of other men… Or, at least, of raven-haired elfmen. For the longest time, it was apparent he had feelings primarily or only for YOU, though neither of you ever truly spoke of it. With Oncyth’s appearance, though, there had been a shift in his gaze, and (as you discovered in embarrassing fashion) it was rather mutual.
“Will you be back?” you had thus asked Oncyth, and it was more for Pearce’s sake than for your own.
Oncyth had shaken his head.
“Why not?” you’d asked.
His eyes had drifted skywards. The sun was still up, though on its march downward from its noon zenith.
“A full moon is coming,” the wolf-elf had said. “Soon.”
