Aubade

Aubade, at a glance, was born fairly unremarkable. She was a quiet, sneaky pup with a strong affinity for hunting, due primarily to her strong nose and nearly silent pawsteps. In looks, she was plain. Her coat was a dark gray, lacking any markings, her eyes a curious olive color unlike either of her parents. Wolves tended to glance over her often, their eyes skipping straight to her brother, with his lovely face and silver tongue. That worked for her; unlike many a wolf in her position, she didn't resent him. In fact, they made a great team. Wander was the charmer; he could talk a mother bear into giving him her cubs; and while they were distracted, Aubade raided their stores.

As she grew, their escapades grew larger than sneaking the best morsels of food and filching herbs and intoxicating berries from their herbalist's medical stores. On a few occasions, they stole from neighboring packs, though nothing large. Even with the carelessness of adolescence tossed about their shoulders, they didn't want to incite a pack war. Once, they nabbed an actual wolf, a strong-looking she-wolf their own age who was supposed to be a broodmother. That one pushed the limits of their mother's patience, but seeing as no violence following, they folded the newly-rescued Tranquil into their litter, and eventually, into their hunting party. Their greatest scheme, though, came to fruition during the pack's first Hyacintho.

It wasn't really explained where Monochrome went when she feel asleep during that week, nor why the moon glowed with the same blue essence that dripped from Ephemera. Laconic, their medicine wolf at the time, didn't ask where their Alpha was getting all her wounds, or why she needed all the salves she did, or why the blood that splattered her pelt ran blue. Aubade and Wander though, were curious. Wander would never survive the so-called Dreamlands, both of them knew. He was quick (in tongue and speed), but if their powerful mother could barely hold her own, then Wander certainly could not.
Aubade though... She could do it.

As it turned out, it wasn't that difficult to get into the Dreamlands. They sought out Ephemera, who knew nearly anything, and perhaps it was favoritism (being that they were the first litter, Ephemera quite liked both of the adolescents) but she was fairly willing to let Aubade take the journey usually reserved only for Alphas. It wouldn't be as easy as it would be for their mother, who just had to fall asleep with intent, though. Ephemera didn't make it gentle, either. She placed a hard paw on Aubade's forehead, all but shoving her face first into the ground, and she was asleep before her body even hit the ground. When her eyes opened, there she was; The Dreamlands were before her.

Aubade doesn't remember much of it. She was too young for the Dreamlands, in hindsight, and she spent most of her time on the run from... Everything. She remembers the fear. She remembers the beauty too though, the vastness of the blue-tinted moon, the peculiar flowers and animals that shone like beacons in the darkness, how she'd never seen a night so bright. She remembers a swarm of dancing blue orbs descending on her, attaching to her coat like burs, all but blinding her with their light.

Then she was awake. In the waking world, fully disoriented and bleeding, but alive. Wander stood above her, exactly where he had been when Ephemera had knocked her out, his mouth agape. The deity herself was gone. Aubade's voice was raspy when she asked Wander what he was staring at, and he didn't respond, merely hauling her to her paws (a tricky task, Aubade was all but dead weight, still heavy with wound and sleep) and pushing her in the direction of the looking pool, a glass-like lake where she could see her reflection clearly.

What a reflection it was. While her gray base coloring hadn't changed, but it was now shot through with blue, in a strange, meandering path focused mostly on her face. And her eyes, lord, were different. Like the color had all but been leached from them, settling to an unsteady, shifting blue, the color of glaciers. Most disconcertingly, her paws let off a smoke-like blue glow, which trailed behind her for a few inches like fog as she moved. Viscerally, she was changed, and for the first time, she felt as if the inside of her body didn't quite fit in its shell. This feeling, as it turned out, would remain for the rest of her life.

If Aubade's pawsteps were quiet before, now they were as silent as the dead's. Ephemera herself couldn't track the young wolf, could not hear her movements or scent her. Her movements were almost too fluid for her body, like she was a clever animation of a wolf. She made no tracks, left no hint of herself in any place she was. Unless she was in the Dreamlands, which she could now enter with the same ease as her mother. Not that she desired to return- it seemed as if the animals there knew she was a fraud. She could hardly step a paw onto the soft, glowing ground without being assaulted on all sides. Instead, she remained in her duty since birth; a hunter, and a damn fine one at that, the leader of the warriors, her brother's foil.

Aubade is a peculiar wolf. Nobody would have guessed she was born so plain, so unremarkable. With one paw in the Dreamlands and the other in the Waking World, her connection to Ephemera and the other deities that haunt their woods is strong. If there's a wolf to go to for advice, it's her. Something tells you she might know even more about the world, and by extension, you yourself, than she is letting on...