Like Moonlight Through Water

Like Moonlight Through Water
	It started with a tear. A single, Atlantian tear.
	Most people don’t even realize that the Atlantians were elves. I never understood that. It was always so blindingly obvious. The Atlantian elves possessed a greater quantity of natural magic within their bodies, but both Atlantian and Forest elves used the same advanced magics.
	When Atlantis was reclaimed by the ocean, for whatever reason, the surrounding waters were changed. The waters had always been mildly enchanted, due to the mere presence of the Ocean elves. But on that day an entire city of elves sank into the ocean in a massive maelstrom…the beasts that were spawned that day still lurk the Earth’s waters today.
	But you didn’t come to me to learn of a myriad of sea creatures…No, you wish to learn of the werewolf. Let’s say a single family of Atlantian elves escaped the maelstrom. Forced to live among humans, a newborn race of frightened and prejudiced sheep in their eyes, they used their broken magics to change their elven appearance.
	Let’s say it was a family of four. A mother, a father, a son, and his wife. Coming from an infinitely more advanced society, they quickly became a wealthy and important family.
	Let’s say that one night, this family attends a party, late at night by the docks. Lights, fine clothing, music. Good company and plenty of wine, the waves lapping on the shore to create a gentle background noise during pauses in the music…
	She hated it all. She hated her life, her new home. She missed a city where moonbeams shone on streets paved with pearls, where one could ladle a rainbow into a cup and drink it like water. A place where mermaids and sentient sharks swam through crystal-clear canals next to the streets, where statues of coral and ever frozen ice adorned every corner. She hated the humans she could only see as warring barbarians. She left the party early and walked down the peer and stood looking out over the ocean.
	A ghost of music drifted to her, a sad and mournful scrap of violin and piano that had the humans in tears. Maybe she was thinking of home, but  I think that scrap of music was the first thing to touch her soul. She might have been thinking of home. She stood on the edge of the peer as the music coaxed a single, sylvan tear down her cheek.
	She was so beautiful…
	The tear left a shining trail on her face and it dropped quietly into the ocean. You should be thankful there was a thick cloud cover that night, otherwise who knows what would have happened. The Atlantian elves have a very particular way of effecting the environment around them.
	That ends the Atlantian half of this story. Everyone knows how rain works: Water evaporates off the ocean, where it’s absorbed into the clouds. The clouds are blown inland by the wind and they rain on the mountains and into rivers. The rivers flow back into the ocean to be evaporated again. The elven tear had diffused throughout the ocean and was evaporated into the clouds. The clouds travelled to a small mountain on another continent.
	At the foot of this mountain lay a small village, in which lived a young man at the age of 19. A hunter. The full moon shone down on him as he prepared to leave the paved stones of his village. Hunting at night was foolish, but the hunter was young and his blood was hot. It had rained the day before, and the stones were still wet with rainwater. The young hunter slung his rifle over his shoulder and melted into the forest.
	He was silent as he made his way through the forest. His destination was a cave farther up the mountain where a pack of wolves mad its den, Wolf pelts were in high demand this year. A single wolf pelt could feed his family for an entire week.
	The hunter came to a river he knew he would have to cross. There was a bridge farther downriver, but it would take an hour to get there. He had no desire to take the time. He was just slinging his rifle off his shoulder when twin moonbeams flickered into life over the river. They drifted, slowly, into the waters of the river. Two writing masses formed, and appeared to absorb the moonbeams. The masses, luminous with moonlight of their own, drew closer to opposite shores. The mass closest to the hunter reached shore first and spilled onto land.
	The writhing mass began to calm and take a solid shape. A wolf. A wolf of rain and light.
	The hunter only stared, dumbstruck, in awe of what he could only describe as fey and wyrd. The mass on the other side had also formed. It was also a wolf. Both of them stood at the very edge of the water, silently looking at each other. The one on the hunter’s side turned away and looked at him. It padded over to investigate this creature of flesh and blood.
	The hunter came to his senses. He unslung his rifle, and had the wind knocked out of him when the wolf pounced on him. His rifle flew from his hands and landed in the dirt a few feet away. The wolf’s aquatic paws pressed on his chest as it snarled in his face.
	The wolf’s face relaxed, but it didn’t release the hunter. It sat staring calmly into his face with eyes of moonlight. It probably saw a kindred spirit in him. They were both hunters, after all. Abruptly, it got off of him and returned to the edge of the water.
	The hunter got up and turned toward his rifle, but stopped at a low growl from the wolf. He turned instead to study the wolves. They were ethereal. Their bodies were made of water, through which flowed moonlight that made them glow a silver-blue. Aquatic eyes gleamed as they stared at each other across the river.
	The wolves started pacing restlessly. They wanted to reach each other, but they were blocked by the river. I wondered why they didn’t just swim, and similar thoughts must have been running through the hunter’s mind. Without warning, as one, the wolves threw back their heads and howled. The hunter watched, no, listened, as the wolves produced a sound. A sound like moonlight through water, a sound that roused the other mountain packs to howl. Corporeal joined ethereal in a symphony of blood and light.
	They wolves stopped, and the sound became a mere memory, an echo. The night was silent. Even the river seemed muted. The nocturnal beings of the mountain were engulfed in fearful quiet. The silence was broken when the wolf on the hunter’s side dived into the river. Its aquatic body instantly blended with the water of the river. It lost its shape, and the hunter could only tell its location by the flowing moonlight that seemed to be its lifeblood. The moonlight was being swept downriver.
	The hunter and the wolf on the other side both ran to follow the moonlight. The wolf crossed over quickly, and emerged from the river a way down, its watery body reforming as it separated from the water. It looked just the same as before; the swim hadn’t diluted it of any of its magic. The wolves, united at last, wrestled for a while, rolling around on the shore. Parts of one wolf seemed to pass through the other, and the hunter blinked, trying to see better across the river.
	The wolves stopped tussling with each other. One turned towards the hunter and barked. The wolves were in no way identical, and it was clear that the one barking was the one that had swam the river. It was larger, and its moonlight seemed to shine brighter. It was barking to the hunter, it wanted him on the other side.
	I don’t know why the hunter did what he did next. He could have swum across the river. Instead he stayed on the shore and ran downriver, leaving his rifle where it lay. The aqualunar wolves followed him on the opposite shore, whooping with delight at the exercise. They had been running for almost an hour when they came to the bridge. It was a small thing, only wide enough for two people to walk abreast. IT was made of dark spruce wood, sturdily built with wood railings and a plaque with the village’s name.
	The hunter ran across the bridge, his boots thunking on the slick wood, to meet the wolves. He hit an especially wet patch and slipped. He fell and hit the railing to his left. A protruding splinter gashed his arm as he hit in, drawing blood. He cursed and regained his footing. His forearm was bleeding heavily, but it didn’t hurt much. He was just about to bandage it when he noticed the wolves of water and light were standing on the bridge, a few feet away. One looked scared. The other looked excited.
	The excited one growled and took a step towards the hunter. It was the wolf that had emerged on the other side of the river. It was smaller than the other, and its light didn’t shine as bright. Its eyes shined very bright, however, as it continued to advance on the hunter.
	The larger, scared one crouched down and whimpered. It didn’t know what to do. It was familiar with the hunter, friends even, but the smaller wolf was its brother. Who does it betray?
	The hunter was probably feeling the absence of his rifle by then. He started backing away from the wolf, recognizing the hungry, predatory look on its face. It had scented blood and it wanted more. It leaped, fast as lightning. The hunter raised his arms in a futile attempt to defend himself. The wolf’s jaws latched onto his shoulder, and warm red blood mingled with water and moonlight. So began the curse of the werewolf: when blood met moonlight.
	Both hunter and wolf began to change at that moment. Under a full moon, the hunter’s limbs stretched and his muscles bulged. His screams were cut off when his lungs and heart began to enlarge. His clothes tore and he continued to grow until he was twice his original height, and one half more his original width. He stood hunched over, dark grey fur covering his entire body. Wicked claws sprouted from his hands and feet. Jagged fangs filled his mouth, and his eyes were glazed over, confused by the flood of new sensations.
	The wolf underwent a less painful transformation. As the hunter’s blood diffused across its watery body, it became more corporeal. Water turned to flesh and bone. Moonlight became blood. Its gleaming eyes turned white and grey, no longer made of what I’ve taken to calling Wolflight: the moonlight that flowed through their aquatic bodies. It became, at first glance, an ordinary wolf.
	They were cursed on different sides of the same coin. The hunter, being primarily human, only became a werewolf during the full moon, when the moonlight activated his curse. The wolf would be a werewolf on all nights except the full moon, when the moonlight would deactivate his curse. The moon acted as a balancing factor for the two werewolves. Anybody bitten by the hunter would share his curse: Only becomes a werewolf on the full moon. Anybody bitten by the wolf would be a werewolf on all nights of the full moon.
	Only two beings stood on the bridge now. The third wolf, the one uncursed, had jumped into the river as the transformations began. It was swept downriver and to a certain city on the shores of the continent. The now-flesh-and-blood wolf turned and fled the bridge. It fled onto the side of the river where it had originally emerged. It disappeared into the forest and I don’t know exactly what it did after that. The hunter stayed on the bridge. Human intelligence clashed with a primal lust. He looked at the plaque that bore the village’s name. He howled then, and it was a sound like moonlight through blood. The mountain wolves did not join in this time; Instead, they cowered in their caves and whimpered.
	The werewolf turned and loped in the opposite direction of the other wolf. Towards his village. I shouldn’t need to tell you what happened – he cursed them all. The other werewolf cursed some others, and they cursed more in turn. The two curses spread like wildfire across the world, and many werewolf hunting guilds were formed. Their vulnerability to silver was quickly discovered, and so these guilds bore names such as “The Silverblades” or “The Silver Phial”. These were the most prominent werewolf hunting guilds. The former was hell bent on the complete eradication of all werewolves; the latter desired to find an alchemical cure.
	One of them succeeded, because there are no more werewolves today, none that I know of, anyway, and I know quite a lot. Werewolves have mostly faded into legend, a thing to scare children with. The human race has an unfortunate habit of forgetting things it needs to remember. If there are a few scattered werewolves left in the world, this habit will be your race’s undoing. You will need to be ready with ancient techniques, if a second plague does occur, if your race wishes to survive.