In a dark and deep land lives young Marjorie, a woman desperate for something more than her conventional life in her tiny village, Core. She aches for something dangerous, something like the dark forest, Mirkwood, which borders her home.
Yet, there...
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Author's Note:
Hello! If you are reading this, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to write for you! If you would like to see more WEREWOLF stories, make sure to check out my profile and read "The Mad Prince and The Little Bird" my current WIP!
This story is something I have written in the last two years, and while it is still going through editing stages, thank you for taking a chance.
All of your feedback, votes, and comments matter so much to me! Once again-- thank you for clicking on this! I look forward to hearing what you think!
Dragged down by ice and blood, the dirty velvet hood blanketing Marsella acted as a sticky second skin instead of a protectant from the glacial winds she marched through. The red fabric hung off the slim promise of a drawstring, which was cinched tightly underneath her soft round chin. Although Marsella was of childbearing age, she was still just a girl—just old enough to see 17 summers and 16 winters. And because of that, she was doe-eyed and supple-faced, not yet wilted by life in the village, Core.
Even with wool and fabric separating her from the winter outside, it seeped in, grasping at her copper hair, and prickling her alabaster skin with gooseflesh. It carried down to her bones. This was the kind of cold people died in, the kind that turned lips a violent lilac before an hour passed. There was only thick, white sleet beyond her hood. It pelted her body, drove into her, filled up Marsella's every breath with ice until her lungs rattled.
Trees drooped in deep, angry bends— two months of winter storms forced the straight spines down, until their branches turned from the sky and back to the ground, from where the trees once grew, from where the trees once ran.
Marsella felt home in this pale world, hiding underneath her hood, lost completely to the eyes of onlookers. She was a strange winter creature in the forest, her fine velvet puffed out to keep warm, her beastly joints moving to stop ice from seeping in and hardening her muscles to stone. Perhaps she was part wolf, for only a wolf was brave enough to face the Allmother's worst fury.
It was unusual for a villager to venture this far from Core. No one willingly traded wool blankets and fire for the hungry mouth of the forest. On this night, families thawed their bodies with bone broth and warm bread; in the morning, the cobblestone streets would be thick with the spoors of fresh yeast and burnt firewood. Yet, something unusual blossomed in Marsella's chest. There was no yearning for furs, for bitter soup, nor simmering Devilshair tea. Something from somewhere deep inside of Marsella forced her forward, and as much as she wanted to collapse, to stay still, to turn into a puddle of frost on the forest floor, she continued. Because this something formed the identical pain in her thorax as a rotten tooth, as if a gaping hole replaced the space between her lungs.
She was a mother— a new, fresh mother, not even an hour from her birthing bed. Blood stuck to her thighs, crawled up her pubic bone with hungry hands, and dried uncomfortably at her navel. In her hands was proof of her status— a dead, snow-white newborn.
