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"Like an arrow from the quiver of God, so now does joy strike my heart." Rukbat sat in her grandfather's cottage, reading the words Regina Vinceterini had spoken on her first sight of the promontory on which she had built the city of the Faithful Spirit. Rukbat looked to the fireplace, and saw her grandfather sharpening the sword he had crafted long before he had even married her grandmother. He looked back, and grinned.

"Continue your reading, Princess."

"Nonno, that is not official yet." She blushed, her face fur turning to a deep auburn.

"Fine, fine, finish your reading, Captain of the Rose." He looked at his granddaughter, trying to figure out how she would worm her way out of this one. This one WAS a proven fact.

"I only got that because the king has a soft spot for me." She looked to the book, and continued.

"'Here shall I build my castle and my home. Here shall the seed of my efforts sprout and bloom.'" Rukbat sighed in frustration. "Long winded, wasn't she?"

"She wanted it to be known that she could fight as a soldier and rule as a queen. Many a general can't govern, and many a governor can't lead a wolf to a carcass." The old wolf sighed. "You must remember that not too long before that, she had been told that a dire wolfess had no place other than in a brothel." He sighed again, more deeply. "Rather than creating the Utopia she'd dreamed of, she's reversed the scale on herself. Though Dires are accepted here, good luck getting anyone to marry us. The nobles intermarry closer than is necessary, and the few lines that aren't married to the nobles won't have anything to do with them."

"Nonno, I'll have something to do with the nobles." She looked at him pointedly. He returned the look.

"It's not about station anymore, Ruk. It's eugenics. You are very lucky that you're even allowed near the prince. After all, you're not pure dire, as he is. You can change your form to be more accepted in the streets. The fact that you do so only impresses your mixed blood more on the minds of your potential enemies."

"I don't have any enemies." Rukbat cocked her head to one side.

"You have many just across the border." He smirked. "Tell me the king next door is happy about you cutting down close to fifty of his men."

"Fifty men from one soldier is little, Nonno." She looked back to her book. "I only got that medal because Dona is kind to me. There are others who deserve more."

Rukbat thought back to the battlefield, watching those who had become her good friends fall as she cut down life after life. She remembered wanting to help them, being unable to cut her way to them; her heart tearing open just a bit more with every final groan. Though more had returned then originally expected, she had stood the vigil over the fallen soldiers with the priests and generals once they had returned to the city. Donato had sung that night, his voice clear and heavy. He had noted later that Rukbat had done the very thing the Mother Regina Vinceterini had been rumored to do. The founding Queen of Fidospiritu had stayed with her soldiers until their death, refusing to forsake any one of them. She had kept her silence. Actually, Rukbat had kept her silence to him for a good while now. She couldn't see why it was so damned important that the kingdom have more of whatever it was that was in that land. That and Donato had scoffed at her when she'd challenged him to fair arms. That sort of insult was not taken easily by a D'Sagitrus.

"Hmm?" She looked at her grandfather, who had stopped his incessant sharpening.

"You stopped reading, and you have a visitor." He indicated a place behind her. She stood, setting her book down, and turned.

"Dante, brother mine!" She wrapped her arms around her sibling, and nuzzled his neck like a pup at play.

"Sister, I hear that you are studying for the presentation ceremony?" He smirked slightly. "Rubbing elbows with the pure of blood?" Rukbat growled, and spat.

"Pure of blood, slow of mind." She growled then smiled. "Give me a half-breed any day." Her look fell on her grandfather. "Not to demean you, Nonno."

"Rukbat, my little pup. . . " Giovan smiled, and waved Dante over. " Dante, my grandson, you both must know something before I pass into the arms of the Mother." He sighed heavily and set down his sword. "Bear in mind that you have blood in you that makes you different. You both have abilities that are rampant only with the dire blood. Dante, you have the ability to see things of other's minds. Rukbat, you are a healer to put your grandmother, Rest Her in Eternal Light, to shame. You both must now know that with these powers comes a responsibility to use them wisely and for good. Otherwise . . . your own existence is forfeit." He sighed heavily. "You must live in accordance with honor, as I have always taught you. Your blood is bound to the earth in a way no other line is. This is why you are able to do what it is you do." He stared into the fire. "Time, space, corporeal existence . . . these things are nothing. You can transcend pain. You can warp time. You can change the world around you with a single thought." He sighed again and his barrel chest seemed to collapse on itself. His eyes fell on Dante. "Don't be consumed by petty jealousies. Take the time to consider your actions." His eyes then met Rukbat's. "Do not be fooled by what is easy. Remember always what is right. No one else can tell you what to do. You are your own judge. The both of you must be sure to remember HONOR always."

"Honor, Nonno, of course. I remember honor." Rukbat looked towards the white castle up the cobbled street. "There are those close to me who seem to have forgotten it, though." She whuffed as she stared up at the castle, the turrets seeming to taunt her small abode.

"Well, it's to be expected of those blue-bloods, after all." Dante chuckled. "Ever since good ol Momma Gina decided to be all high and mighty, they can't do anything they're not comfortable with that isn't in the rulebook." He yelped as his grandfather cuffed him.

"You will not speak ill of either the Mother or of the King in this house!" Giovan growled. "Do not forget those who have brought us to where we are and what you owe your king! This is not honor you speak, Dante."

"It is my heart!" The young wolf snapped. "Those that you speak so well of and bare your throat to STOLE YOUR SON'S ability to have children!! They stole my childhood, and they put blood on a healer's paws!" He indicated his sister. "Captain of the Rose, indeed, they make her a combination of beauty and deadliness! It isn't IN RUK to kill, Nonno." Rukbat looked at her brother in shock. He had never before raised his voice to his elders. He'd always worked in quiet submission, his displeasure surely known, but unvoiced. Her gaze then shot hurriedly to her grandfather, whose full height of eight foot was suddenly about twice as broad, his eyes no longer a warm glow, but a pitiless glint that she had seen too much these days. The battle she had fought in came back to her, and in that moment she knew what it was that her grandfather had been like in battle. They all said that he was a specter of ultimate death, growing a full half-foot when he was in full bloodlust, the color of even his eyes changing. There was a phantasm in the room, nearly visible, surrounding the gentle wolf that had dandled her on his knee.

"VIVERE VITA CON TIMORE È DI VIVERE VITA A METÀ!!" Giovan growled sharply. "Never forget what I have taught you. NOW SAY IT." His voice had become deeper, with the feral nature of it stunning and bringing a mixed reaction from the two youths before him. Rukbat reached out to him, and then thought the better of it. Dante was nearly growling aloud, his hackles beginning to rise. Rukbat now knew who needed her calming touch more, and laid her paw on her brother's arm. "Honor . . ." the suddenly deadly and threatening patriarch prompted. Both Rukbat and Dante blinked a few times before responding.

"Honor my shield, honor my sword. Wit is my arrow, Wit is my bow." Rukbat managed, her ears flattened in fear of this sudden outburst. "Courtesy is my peace-binding." She looked to Dante pointedly. "Let Honor, Wit, and Courtesy guide my actions as a wolf of the Mother." Dante whimpered, but picked up the chant as Rukbat continued.

"Honor, Wit, and Courtesy shall guide me all the days of my life, and shall lead me to the arms of the mother." They continued. "Without Honor, there is no Trust. Without Wit, there is no Self, and without Courtesy, there is no Companionship." Rukbat finished alone, as the last line was always reserved for the females of the race.

"Honor, Wit, and Courtesy guide my actions; Trust, Self, and Companionship guide my thoughts. Honor, Wit, Courtesy, Trust, Self, and Companionship all formed together make the strongest of all . . . this force binds all, remembers all, and endures all. This force we call Love." Rukbat looked to her grandfather, tears in her eyes. "Like an arrow from the quiver of God, so now does joy strike my heart. For now I understand. . ." She sniffled. "Love. I understand the love of a mother . . . who realized that she had not only a family coming, but a race." She could not know, in her sweet and still soft innocence, how very wrong she was.

"You're one of them now." Dante chuckled. "Enh, it's good you're marrying a noble, because you sure sound like one." With that comment, Dante felt not one, but two maternal slaps to his haunches.

"Just like him, yanno that?" He barked to his sister. Rukbat grinned, and chuckled.

"Someone has to be."

During the next few weeks, Giovan D'Sagitrus seemed to hit a decline. His fur, which had never shown a sign of grey, began sprouting snow-white patches. Rukbat often spent the night at his cottage, her room abandoned for favor of a pallet on the floor in her grandfather's room. "Nonno . . . it's all right. . ." She'd said that how many times in the past nights, as he lay on his bed, shaking with sudden weakness. Why couldn't she heal this? Why didn't this illness shrink from her touch, as so many others had done? She looked out the small window to the sky above. "Nonno . . . I know you must go to the Mother's arms someday . . . but must it be now?" She fought back the tears that threatened to rip sobs from her like a cub lost in the woods. "Father of my father . . . do not leave me . . . I beg you." She crawled into bed next to the huge lupine, as she had done as a cub, frightened by the storms that often visited Fidospiritu. In response, the shuddering wolf pressed his feverish form into his granddaughter's. The heat of his body was so intense that Rukbat swore another second of it would singe her fur. She shook her head and steeled herself. "Let it singe." She wrapped her arms around her grandfather, and held him as she had been held all those years ago. "The storm will pass soon, dear one. The storm will go." She murmured into his ear, keeping him safe from the storm inside his body as best she could.

The next morning dawned brightly. Rukbat jumped in surprise when she found herself waking up in clean sheets, with her head on soft pillows of fine linens. She knew this place, not by looks, but by scent. This place reeked of Donato. She sprang out of bed, only to find herself in the same wolf's arms. "Easy, Ruk . . . easy does it." He whispered into her ear.

"LET ME GO!" She shrieked. "Let me go to Nonno!" She pushed away from him, and her legs gave out underneath her. "Take the spell off, your highness!" She snapped back at him, her eyes a deeper blue due to her anger.

"Would that I could, Ruk . . . you're exhausted." Donato looked like he'd been up all night, and that made him look like all hell. "We're all exhausted. Your Grandfather is sick. We weren't even sure about moving him, but the doctor-"

"YOU MOVED HIM!!?! Moved a sick wolf? Better that you sign his death certificate now!!" Rukbat screeched, her paws hitting the floor with all the impotence she felt at her inability to move.

"Would you relax and listen?" Donato barked at her, his hackles coming up, just the small poof at the base of his neck showing. "He is under the care of our own healers. Stubborn you may be, but I've dealt with those at court. I can out-stubborn you any day, Ruk, and I won't have him die in some squalid forge with bad air for a dying wolf's lungs!"

"HE'S NOT DYING!" Rukbat finally bellowed, her anger giving her enough strength to launch herself at Donato. Unfortunately, she landed with her nose pressing the tip of his toes. "Damn you."

"Ruk . . ." He knelt, shaking his head. "Look at you . . . blindly striking out at everything around you. You are exhausted. You must sleep and let someone else fight for a while." He picked her up, and set her back in the bed. When she tried to wriggle her way out of it, looking like a fishing worm in a handkerchief, Donato bit back a chuckle and held her to the bed. "No." He climbed into the bed and pinned her. "No, you're not leaving this bed, even if I have to keep you here by pinning you to the mattress all night." Rukbat's eyes widened, and suddenly softened.

"If you must . . . but Dona . . ." She said, her voice husky.

"Yes?" He blinked at the sudden change.

"Be gentle, Dona." She blinked innocently.

The reaction she got was worth all the indignity she had just suffered and then some. Donato backpedaled, spinning his legs in midair before landing in an undignified heap on the marble floor.

"WHAT?!?!" He spluttered. "I- I- I DIDN'T mean it like THAT!!!!" Rukbat fell into such peals of laughter that the guards down the hall heard.

"Priceless!" She guffawed. "The look on your face. . ." She pitched a pillow at him. It landed three feet off the mark, hitting him squarely in the crotch. "Dammit."

"You filthy spawn of a street whore." Donato shot at her, laughing.

"Inbreed." She chuckled back.

"That's my mama you're referring to!" He looked overly offended, crossing his arms and huffing like a hurt cub.

"You said it first." She smiled to him.

"Flirt." He snickered. "Laaaaaaaaaady." He jeered. Rather than the typical right hook to the jaw, Rukbat only smiled wider.

"I know you are, but what am I?" The childish nature of her jeer hid the true frustration she felt. Why couldn't she stay mad at him?

Before Donato could respond, there was a messenger at the door. A young healing initiate popped in, and dipped a bow. "Beggin' your pardon, Your 'Ighness." He was a youth from the docks that knew how to heal, Rukbat judged by his accent.

"Speak, boy." He waved, and stood, the façade of prince sliding back into his face and countenance like grease over a hot griddle.

"Giovan D'Sagitrus, Smith to the King, requests the presence of 'is Granddaugh'er and Grandson in All But Blood at 'is bedside." The youth looked as though he had memorized that part. "He looked awful weak, 'Ighness." Dona waved and dismissed the youth.

"Ruk, I'll take you." He didn't turn immediately.

"As you wish, Dona." She sounded soft and defeated, like a woman of the court. Dona turned at this sudden change. Rukbat, though she was no different in height, looked to be about half her proper size, her eyes shining with held-back tears.

Donato ignored the looks from the many courtesans and nobles as he carried Rukbat through the palace, wrapped in a sheet and a blanket made of wool from the feral sheep that the kingdom kept. Custom forbade he or Rukbat from crying within earshot of the chamber in which Giovan was being kept, otherwise he would have been running tears. As they entered the chamber, Rukbat looked up from her place at Donato's shoulder. Her grandfather was talking with the king. He was joking about the wench they'd tossed in the hay in some far-off country, how her chest was ample, but her brain lacking. He smiled when he saw Rukbat and Donato. "So here are the lovers . . . reconciled at last?" He chuckled. "Dante was just telling me how it would take my dying to do so." He looked to the young wolf, off to his right. "Pay up."

"Nonno, we never decided an amount." Dante smiled.

"True." He looked back to his granddaughter. "What have I told you about overdoing it?"

"I was worried about you, Nonno." She huffed in frustration, and looked at the king. "Rather persistent son you have here." Formalities be damned. If she had to suffer the indignity of being carried around like a limp doll, the king could suffer the impoliteness she had for all at the moment, king or not.

"His mother raised him." The King smiled, though it was obvious that he would have rather done anything but. Rukbat looked to Donato, who then set her on the bed next to her grandfather.

"Nonno, how dare you scare me like that?" She chuckled, observing the wolf's sudden moist nose, his easy breathing. "How dare you make me think that you were dying?" She set her head on the pillow, looking at him with a pup's eyes. "How dare you make me think that you would leave me?"

"Rukbat." He shook his great head. "How many times has death shrunk from your touch? How many times has death used your hand to make itself known? About an equal amount, my sweet cub? There is a balance to life, darling. You can heal, and you can kill. You can lie, and you can tell the truth. You can spin cloth, and you can rend it. You can shatter a blade, and you can forge one. When the time comes for things to pass into the mother's hands, they know it is their time. As I now know, Rukbat. The mother wants us to enjoy our lives, savor the pain and the joy. This is why she gives us clarity and health in our final moments. She found this place for us, and so wants us to enjoy it."

"Nonno, you speak as though the mother is a goddess." Rukbat closed her eyes. "Isn't that evil?" How often had she witnessed the death of a heretic, claiming the Mother to be a god in Lupine form? How many times had she heard those speak of the need for a true god they could touch the body of? How often had she told them that gods do not die, and so the Mother could never be a god? How often had she herself wanted to pray to anything but the force that had seen her sent to the battlefield, and found the Mother guiding her thoughts back to the truth, the candle in darkness, the life of all?

"No, sweet one. The mother is not a goddess. She is our mediator to the force that none of us can comprehend. She is the one we can talk to for smaller things, things that bother us, but are too small for the notice of the powers that be. She acts for them, and for us."

"Nonno. . ." Rukbat stroked the massive paw that lay near her own. Those paws were there to catch her when she was falling, to punish her when she had gone too far. Those paws had taken her grandmother's as she lay dying, and had held Rukbat as she took breaths that were among her first. In those paws lay the same balance as Giovan had said were in Rukbat's. "Nonno, please, stay a little longer."

"The fields are green, Rukbat, the steel is hot . . . the time is right." His breath came easily, though it had been rasping for years. "The mother, Ruk . . . she looks like you. You, your grandmother, the queen . . . she looks like every wolfess in the world." He smiled. "So beautiful . . . The whole world in a wolfess, Ruk, like life is."

"Nonno?" Rukbat nosed the giant lupine's shoulder.

"So beautiful . . . this life . . . so beautiful. Like . . . life . . . is beautiful." His eyes shut, his chest fell. No accompanying rise followed. Rukbat looked to the face that had once been her grandfather's and saw nothing more than a lifeless doll, a machination that looked like her grandfather.

"The vessel is emptied." She whispered, and continued in the way that tradition demanded. "My heart has joined the mother, for the father of my father has ceased his singing." Rukbat felt a paw wrap around her arm, and she shook it off, letting her head fall to the pillow next to her grandfather's. ~If this is death, dear mother, then let me see it no more as an enemy. Help me . . . to accept.~

Acceptance came no more easily when her eyes opened, seeing Donato asleep nearby on the floor. He was curled up on the hearthrug, his chest heaving. She sat up and looked around. Damn them, they'd moved her again. She blinked as she saw Donato enter from the door. She glanced back to the wolf on the rug. The king. The king was crying for his friend. Donato found it hard to stand in one place as he eyed Rukbat. The room, once resplendent in white and blue, was now festooned in black and red, the mourning colors of the kingdom. She stood and went to the window, looking out into the streets. It was nighttime, the moon hidden behind a bank of silvery clouds. Donato came up from behind her, resting his paws on her shoulders. "I'm sorry. Forgive me my arrogance." He looked to his father, weeping in front of the fire. "He's been like that since you slept, near a day and a night ago. Can you-" Rukbat raised her paw, cutting him off.

"I can do nothing for a heart broken by grief. Not with my healer's tricks." She walked over to the king, cradling the massive wolf's head in her lap. "All I can do is be here as he cries." The king immediately crawled into Rukbat's lap, his head buried in her shoulder. "Comfort him, like any mother would a child."

"Sing, Ruk." Donato whispered. "You can sing any pain away." Rukbat looked to Donato.

"Not this one."

The moon still hung in the sky as Rukbat followed her father and mother to the graveyard. It was a high, lonely place in the mountains where nothing grew and no water flowed. It was a place of death, in which to rest the dead. Rukbat had heard of the gorgeous sunrises that could be seen from this point, but had never lasted a vigil here in clear weather. On the day she buried her friends, she found that the sun had hidden its face from all, hiding behind a fine drizzle of unseasonable rain. She thought back to that day, the numerous wives, children, and sweethearts of her comrades weeping while her eyes stayed dry. How many homes had she visited? How many had she comforted while they mourned? She remembered now, that one of the children had commented on her dry eyes, accusing her of not respecting the dead. How easily cruelty came with pain . . . she remembered taking the cub in her arms, explaining that although she wished they would, the tears would not come. The child had blinked, and told her that tears always came with sadness. She had responded by telling the child that grief, true and full grief, was not felt in the same way by all, and that at times, grown-ups want to cry, want to wail, want to scream their misery to the heavens, but all they can find is silence, a pain too deep for release. No such pain gripped her now. It was all too clear that she would cry tonight, for many nights to come.

The graveyard was a forest of red marble and black granite, save for the snow-white arched pavilion in the center. It was here that the procession led, a courtesy granted and commanded by the king. As the entirety of Rukbat's family and the king's own mounted the final step, the King spoke.

"Strangers . . . friends . . . brothers. . ." He looked to the body of his dear friend, dressed in simple unbleached, unfettered linen, spun by Rukbat herself, and a tear fought his supreme control. "We hid nothing from each other, my friend. Our bodies knew each other; our souls fought none of our bonding. From each other, we held nothing. We were lucky enough to find others in our lives that knew and respected that, taking each other's company as well as ours. We held nothing from each other, dear one. Why now, must you hold yourself from me?" The king's shoulders shook as he continued. "Lascilo riposarsi nella pace. Lascilo essere circondato da luce eterna e lascilo essere liberato dal dolore di questo mondo per la gioia del seguente." This was not the traditional prayer for the dead, Rukbat recognized. Normally it was much shorter, more to a point. This was a private entreaty to Heaven itself, 'Let him rest in peace. Let him be surrounded by eternal light, and let him be freed from the pain of this world for the joy of the next'. She looked to the pedestal on which her grandfather's shell now rested, and the figure that stood shaking beside it. No one else moved forward to speak. No one dared approach the king in his grief-ridden state, none but her. As her paws padded on the marble, she vocalized softly, her voice bouncing off of the marble at first, then causing the stone to ring with a nearly-angelic tone. As she approached the king, she felt words come to her. This was not a song of mourning, but a song of joy.

"The yoke is lifted, the dream is done! Awaken, my loves, for our time has come!" The holy ones stared at her, as though she had gone mad. She ceased her singing for a moment, and spoke in a voice both light and heavy. Her joy was immense, her grandfather no longer felt life's pain, but she would never again know the comfort that his arms gave. "I tell you now, gathered in this place of death, I am divided as day from night. My heart swells with the joy of knowing this one, this gift of heaven. His arms held me safe; his hands guided mine to create. He taught me all that is good in life; he showed me the path that I could walk if I had the courage. I tell you now, sons and daughters, I will celebrate such a life!" She looked to her family, whose shock was obvious. "Can you not remember, then? His smile was always ready for all who had none, his hands always willing to help another? How highly he held honor? How wonderfully he crafted life from unloving stones? How patiently he tolerated the incessant questions of the sons and daughters of nobles and commoners alike? How he never failed to take an apprentice, even without the cost commanded by law? Compassion and Honor ruled his life!" She glanced to the king, who was smiling softly. "Yes, we must stand vigil for him, but for one who was so full of life's fire, the tears of sadness will bring his soul back to comfort us. Let him hear us sing, laugh, and then cry for joy! He is with the love of his life, now." Here her exuberance quieted. "I don't remember much of Grandmother. They say she was a healer of some ability, and that she met Grandfather on the battlefield. That's all I know. That and that her face was the first I ever saw. I remember her death vaguely . . . I remember seeing Grandfather looking like a statue, his face stony as the marble he rests on. I remember his pain, and I know that he would not want to be the cause of such. Let us celebrate him, as fits such a one."

There was a silence for a moment that lingered with the mist on the hill. She looked to the Holy Ones, their faces disapproving and stony. "I know." She said flatly. "This is disrespectful to the dead." She grinned. "Grandpa was also a bit of a tradition-breaker. He brought me up. Argue it out with him." With that, she went to the marble slab on which her grandfather's body rested.

"You are free to go to the arms of the Mother. I release you from your bonds on this earth and take them as my own. Go now in peace." She rested a hand on her grandfather's forehead. With a bright flash of light, it vanished.