A Summoning: Part X

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X
~Temperance~

Two women walked into the library of a small, fairly rural town a good two hours' drive out from the college campus. The shorter one, with somewhat shorter hair, led the way to the back shelves, where there were stored some books so old that one couldn't even check them out for fear of their being damaged. She poked through the spines on those shelves, kneeling and standing on tiptoes to see each one in turn, and eventually pried one out, offering it over.

This is it, Jess said silently, watching her Master open the tome and thumb through it briefly.

She replied with a quiet “Hm,” scanning several of the pages. This was your 'raw material', right? But you put it all together. I don't suppose you ever made any notes about that part?

I didn't want to leave any evidence, so I never wrote anything down. Jess tapped her head with a finger. But it's all in here. If I had a copy that didn't look like it was gonna fall apart, and didn't belong to the library, then I could annotate it with everything I know.

So, say, if you could just take this one out of the library, you think you could type up something with just the relevant info and leave out all the criticism and dead ends? Zotha suggested. Jess nodded.

The demon-god closed the book and held it up in one hand. The other she also held up as though there were another, invisible book in it, and then whispered a command: “Cᴏᴘʏ.” Some streams of purple magic went from the book to the empty space in her other hand, gathering themselves together into the shape of a book before the glow burst gently off of it, leaving behind an identical-looking book—if in slightly better condition than the original. Then some shadow wrapped itself around the copy and it disappeared, Zotha handing the original back to her priestess afterward. It's in our room now.

Jess nodded, taking the book and carefully shelving it again. You know, Master, there are some people who would pay you a lot of money for helping with old book preservation...

I bet. It's probably worth a look, I suppose.

They walked out again, and around to the same hidden spot they had appeared in, disappearing back to their dorm room as quickly as they had left. The copied book was waiting on top of Jess's desk, next to her laptop.

“Well, I guess even I'm giving you homework now,” Zotha said.

“Heheh. I know how important this is,” her priestess replied, going to sit in her chair. “I'll have it done by sunset, for sure.”

“Good.” The demoness turned toward the werewolf girl still asleep in their extra bed. “Hmmn...”
“What is it?”
“I just wonder if our genius friend might have some better idea of how to help get her memory back. Or at least—find where she was before this happened.”

“I've got her number,” Jess said, offering over her phone.
“Thanks.”

After a brief ring, a quiet, shy-sounding voice responded: “H-hello?”
“Yo, this is Zotha.”

“Oh, you,” Prama said, her confidence seeming to return instantaneously. “What's up?”
“Well..” She described their having 'discovered' a werewolf running around through their forest (leaving out the part about Fox telling them so), and her attempt to 'tame' him turning him into an at least much friendlier girl. Then she explained the problem—amnesia, and not being able to track where she came from.
“Just in case I'm assuming the wrong thing about werewolves—she can turn into like a wolf form, right?” Prama said. “With senses just as good as a real wolf?”
Zotha glanced at the sleeping girl for just a second, and immediately perceived that she could. “Certainly.”

“Yeah, so. Duh. Just give her a good whiff of her former self and tell her to track that past where you can't. The trail might be a little cold after two days but unless she crossed a bunch of rivers on the way there she should be able to trace it all the way back to wherever she first 'turned' or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah, that's pretty clever,” Zotha said, nodding to herself.

“Naturally. If that's all—I'm kind of in the middle of doing the rest of my homework for the semester. So, call me back if you need any more obvious questions answered.”

“Will do, little miss genius.” That, at least, drew a brief giggle before Prama hung up.

“Well,” she said, placing Jess's phone down on her desk, “once she wakes up, we'll ask her to track her former self down by scent. I think it's better if she's had her sleep first, though, after what she's been through.”

“Mmh.” Her priestess was already concentrating pretty hard on her work, so Zotha decided to look for something else to occupy herself with to avoid being a distraction. Speaking of homework, though...there was a bit of it she'd been planning to get done over the weekend, when she (Zeke, rather) had gone to bed the night of the kidnapping. Maybe it'd be a good idea to take care of it now. Sure, she could probably cheat and 'order' her homework to be already done, but waving her hands like that to solve every problem of her own just didn't feel right. It wasn't exactly the best way to really learn things, at least.

---

Not long after sunset, Zotha rose from her own desk to go place a hand on her priestess's shoulder, looking over her head at the screen. “How's it going?”
Jess gave a small sigh. “Well, I'm not exactly finished, but the big stuff is there. You could read it if you want to.”
“Maybe it's better to take a break for now. The eight hours I set for our guest to sleep are almost up.” Jess swiveled the chair to face the bed the werewolf in question was, for the moment, still sleeping soundly in.

“You know, Master..isn't there a more direct way to fix her problem? Can't you just 'order' her memories to come back?”

“It'd be very convenient if it worked, but I don't think it will. What I learned while 'taming' her is that a person's mind and soul is extensively complicated. Plus her wolf side has a will of its own, and if I try to do something to her mind that that will doesn't want, then it'll fight me the entire way, perhaps damaging the battlefield—which would be her mind. Trying to force her memories back by pumping a bunch of magic into her brain would probably hurt much more than help.”

“I see...I guess we'll try Prama's idea, then.”
Zotha nodded. “Once she wakes up on her own.”

“..Until then, we really need to come up with a decent cover story in case she does lead us to someone and we need to explain that she's...him. Whoever she was before. I don't think 'hey I'm a new goddess in town and the moon god told me through the fox god to help him out' is gonna cut it.”
“Ah, I can help with that, Master,” Jess said with an eager nod. “Cover stories come pretty naturally to me, after all.”

“Again, scary. But fine. What's your idea?”

A short while later, the werewolf girl squirmed in place, made a couple of soft confused barks while tangling herself up in the covers further in an attempt to get out from under them, and finally throwing them violently off of herself (and the bed entirely). Then she slowly pulled herself up, looking around blearily and blinking her eyes a couple of times. Her ears flapped a couple of times, as if experimentally, and then went to their more normal turning and twitching behavior as she seemed to start to remember where she was.
“Hey, sleepy,” Zotha said, getting up from her desk and waving to her.
“Morning!” She said, hopping to her feet with her tail wagging. “Uhm, is it morning..? I feel super awake like it is..” Her stomach growled. “And hungry. Nnn, I haven't eaten anything but some—gross—some squirrels and stuff.”
“Well, lucky for you we just finished making dinner. I'll get it out of the kitchen,” the demoness said, heading that way. She made a bit of food out of the girl's sight while Jess led her to a table.

“It's actually evening right now. I guess being part wolf makes you nocturnal or something?” the priestess reasoned. “Or, it could just be you were so sleep-deprived that you needed sleep, but now that you've slept you're not tired right now.”
“Actually. I feel like being awake really late is sorta normal for me,” she said. “Even before all this happened. Wonder why...”

Taking a cue from the somewhat altered tastes of Cameron and Anika over the past couple of days, Zotha brought in a plate with a fairly large portion of meat on it and just a little bit of vegetables and bread. She also had some food for herself and Jess, who she'd just remembered hadn't had supper and probably wasn't about to ask for it of her own accord.

The werewolf girl tore into her food wildly, ignoring the utensils and ripping at the meat with her sharp teeth. They tried to not to be bothered by it, Zotha reasoning that she was both hungry and not used to suppressing...say, some new instinctive predatory eating habits. After a little while she paused, swallowing the bite in her mouth. “I um...I had a dream,” she said. “It was really nice...” Her ears drooped. “..But also kinda sad? I'm sorta surprised I can still remember it so well, 'cause like usually you forget whatever you dreamed about as soon as you wake up, right?” She went back to eating.
“Yeah,” Jess said. “What was it about?”
“Shmw Mn wnns...” she started to answer immediately with her mouth still full, but gulped it down at this point. “I was, like, me, y'know, looking like...this,” she waved vaguely to herself. “And I was looking up at the full moon, in that forest you find me in? But it didn't, hurt, like it did the first time, when I really looked at the moon and the wolf came out and got angry and took over.” She paused, inhaling a bit more food. “I felt really nice instead. The wolf was calm and happy, I felt like I was really in control of myself again, looking at that moon. I even...felt like I was, who I'm s'posed to be if I remembered everything the wolf made me forget.”

The werewolf girl's expression was genuinely happy for a moment as she ate some more, recalling this. After another few bites, however, it darkened again. “But then I, remembered...that I forgot. That I'm not really, myself right now, not really even totally in control. So, I did kind of a funny thing. It made sense to me at the time, 'cause it was a dream, y'know?”

“What was that?” Zotha prompted after watching her eat a little more.
“Well—I got mad at the moon. I asked it why. Why am I, like this, with this—animal—trying to take over my mind?!” The emotion visibly coursed through her while she repeated the question—a panicked, angry confusion that made her voice crack and left her nearly in tears. She stopped eating, slowly raising a napkin to her eyes and sniffling—the outburst had clearly taken her by surprise too.

“Are you okay?” Jess aid with a look of concern. “You can stop if you need to.”

“No, no,” she shook her head. “Th-this is, it's important, Master! The moon, it—it answered me. Not in words, but...”

The werewolf closed her eyes, envisioning it. “It showed me what it was: A dark side and a light side. Everyone can see the front, but the back, wild and mysterious—it's just as important. For either side to try to deny or take over the other is—nonsense. They have to exist and work together to ever be truly happy. They're totally different, but they're just...parts of the same whole. If there's balance between them, then...there's peace. I think I understand, but...mmh...” She trailed off, opening her eyes again and eating much more slowly for a moment., thinking about it some more. The demoness and her priestess looked on silently, not wanting to interrupt.

“I was still upset,” she said finally. “I said, something like, 'If that's what you want—if that's what I'm supposed to be, then why...Why did it hurt!?” She raised her voice, getting a pained expression again, but not quite as bad as before. “Why did the wolf take over and try so hard to hurt me, and others too? The moon..showed me something else. It showed me the tides.” Her face calmed again, her eyes staying open this time.
“The moon pulls the tides. They go in, they go out. The balance is there is, over time, instead of all at once like the sides of the moon,” she said. “But it also showed me, a flood. Water rushed in from the ocean, overflowing a huge area—forests, towns. It drowned animals, stranded people, destroyed so much...” Her tone and expression were clearly more stressed saying this, her ears folded back against her head. “And the moon—the moon was there, pulling the tides the other way—back towards the sea. The moon was strong, but nothing compared to the forces of nature behind the flood. Sometimes nature taking its course is good, but sometimes it needs help not to hurt people...and sometimes, there just isn't enough help,” she said.

“But—you helped me. Right?” she asked, looking between them with a much more hopeful expression.

“Of course. And we'll keep helping you until you can get everything back under control,” Zotha said. “In fact, while you were asleep we've had an idea of how to do just that.”
“Really?” The werewolf's tail thumped against her chair, wagging eagerly.
“Well, how are you with scents?” Jess said.
“Umm—pretty okay, I think? If I look more wolfy I think I can smell better though,” she said. “I think it's easy for me to look more wolfy, but I didn't wanna before 'cause..that was how the wolf wanted to look. Puppy's a little calmer now, though...”
“I had a little trouble tracking you back to where you came from,” Zotha said, “but we're hoping you can track yourself. I managed to get a scrap of what you were wearing before I did the 'taming spell' on you,” she said, producing a small piece of cloth (actually “copied” from what her own power remembered of the girl's clothes pre-transformation). “Maybe we can find enough of a trail this way to locate your home or something.”
“That's great!” she said. “Um..c-can I finish eating first though?”
“Of course.”

Soon after, the three of them appeared (Zotha keeping them invisible) at the edge of the forest, near the spot the goddess's power was able to trace the girl back to. After a small nod from Jess, the girl in question began changing form. Soft, dark brown fur puffed out all across her body, and then she made a soft “Rrr~ruff!” noise as she stretched upward, gaining a couple of feet in height; her hands and feet changed back into paw-like shapes, her breasts grew about a cup size larger and her figure overall enhanced enough to start audibly tearing both of the pairs of shorts she had on. Zotha noticed this in time to wave a little bit of magic toward them and make the clothes repair themselves again and grow with her.

Her changes also included a visible gain of muscle strength, granting her a six-pack visible even under the fur and visibly strong (though still fairly slim) arms and legs. She gave a few louder barks as her face pushed forward into a long, canine muzzle lined with razor-sharp teeth, completing the transformation. She knelt onto all fours after that, sitting like a dog and looking up at Jess with a grin in her muzzle and her tail wagging, but after a moment she tugged on her top a bit, seeming to find it quite uncomfortable.

“Hmm..here,” the demoness said, kneeling a little closer and tapping the vest. Its sleeves retracted to short sleeves again, and it billowed out into a T-shirt big enough to drape over her body and long enough to reach her hips.
“Um, thanks, rrf..” She pulled around on it a little again. “I still don't totally like this cloth stuff all over my fur but I don't wanna be indecent either...”

Zotha nodded. “Here,” she offered the bit of copied cloth toward the girl's muzzle. She sniffed at it. “Think you can track that?”
“Mm-hm! I know this scent super well already,” she said, standing up on all fours. Her tongue slid out of her mouth for a second, wetting her nose, and she lowered her head to the ground, tail wagging up in the air. After a second or two she lifted her head again. “I think I got it! Follow me, masters!” With that, she started eagerly walking, like a dog, in the direction the scent lead her.

'Masters'? Jess questioned.

Let it be. I think it helps her 'stay obedient' to think of us this way, and she wants to find some way to remember what she forgot too.

Fine...

They followed the werewolf girl's lead.

So...I guess that dream was La Lune's 'less direct' way of communicating, Jess said.

Seems so.

What was she trying to say to us with all that? Or was it just to encourage her, for now?

I think she was telling me more about what her nature is, and re-emphasizing for me that no deity can go completely against their nature, at least not effectively.

So..what, balance and nature I guess? The moon? Werewolves?
All involved, certainly, Zotha nodded. Seems like not 'balance' in that stupid morality balance way where you don't want good or evil to win—because that makes sense—but more like in the sense of peace, with opposites working together in harmony. But it's complicated—sometimes conflict and destruction is inevitable, no matter how much one pushes against it. On the other hand, that conflict can be an important part of how balance later comes about, too...

Maybe I get it. Cycles, Jess thought, just like the moon. Constant balance might be impossible, but it's more about balance over time. Push down one side of a scale and let go, and it'll put itself right again when you let go, unless you break it.

I can't imagine she's very happy about pollution, Zotha thought. Maybe even anti-technology?

They paused their conversation for a moment, both watching the werewolf girl continue to track herself. They had cut through a few smaller wooded areas and across a couple of roads by now, Zotha sensing for cars and ready to stop the werewolf if needed—though it hadn't been yet.

Clearly werewolves are 'her' race, just like Kitsune are Fox's. Or maybe in a slightly different way. She might have actually made them or something. But wolves are predatory, Zotha pointed out. They don't exactly live in harmony with their prey.

Predators eating prey is 'natural', Jess replied, and you get a kind of equilibrium in the ecosystem where they keep the prey from eating too many plants, but the limited supply of prey keeps the predators from getting too populous too. Caring about nature and the overall balance is different from caring about the life of a single deer or sheep or whatever. Also, dogs are sorta like wolves, they share most of the DNA at least; and they act as companions to humans, totally different but working together? Werewolves are both—wild animal and human master all in one.

La Lune isn't 'nature to the exclusion of people', Zotha concluded. She wants people and nature working together, in harmony. Werewolves represent that ideal to some extent, maybe even to a fault? Sometimes the 'nature' gets too strong and starts destroying the person, but there's nothing she can do about that. It's the opposite of what usually happens, people destroying too much nature. Maybe she isn't so anti-tech, as long as the tech in question isn't destroying the environment.

They arrived in a small suburb, and the werewolf girl slowed her pace, looking up a bit more frequently. After a bit, she got back up onto her feet/hind legs, really looking around with a wide-eyed expression, her tail tense and her ears sticking straight up. “Something wrong?” Zotha asked.
“Um..I-I think I know this place. I know I know this place,” she said.
“Great! One of those houses stick out as 'yours'?” Jess asked.
“Um...” After another look around, she nodded, and turned in the direction of a nearby house. “I think that's it?”

“Stay behind me for a moment,” Zotha said, walking up to the place and, rather than approaching the front door, coming to one side. She pointed toward a second-story window. “Broken. Boarded up too.” Then toward the ground: “Most of the glass is gone, but there's trace amounts and I can 'tell' it used to be here. So—window was broken from the inside,” she said quietly.
“Anybody home?” Jess asked.
“...One person, female. Not too far from the front door. Your scent here?” she asked the werewolf girl, pointing toward her feet. After scurrying over, she bent down and sniffed a bit. “Mm-hm! It sorta, stops here actually.” She stood, looking up at the window; her ears folded down slightly and her tail lowered. “I..I feel like I fell out. Like the wolf threw me out when I wouldn't open the door for it,” she said slowly.
“Mm. Guess we've probably got the right place.” The demoness turned to her. “Perhaps you should take on the more human look you had earlier for this,” she suggested.

“Okay!” The werewolf nodded eagerly, and started shrinking back toward the human form. Zotha twirled a finger, keeping the shorts fitting her but only shrinking the shirt slightly so it would stay on. Before long she was back to the look she'd had just after being 'tamed', with only the ears and tail of a wolf.

“Now then, we're going to have to try to explain what happened to whoever's inside,” Zotha said. “I'd like you to stay hidden out here until we've had a chance to confirm for certain we have the right place, and..prepare whoever for how different you look right now. Understand?”
“Mm-hm...” The werewolf girl looked a little sad from the reminder that she looked different, the realization that whoever was inside might not even recognize her.

“Okay. Now..stay right here,” the demoness said, coming to a spot near the corner of the wall between the side of the house they were on and the front. “I'll get your attention when it's time to come inside.”

She nod-nodded, going to the place and standing there while Zotha and her priestess went around to the front door.

---

There was a vast garden under a starry night sky, bathed in silver light. The paths between the flowers and trees were short, soft grass, pleasant to bare feet. Apart from the careful, artistic organization of the plants themselves, no sign of civilization was in sight—no concrete, metal, or unnatural stone, with the distant edges of the garden marked only by interminably high hedges.
The source of the light, not nearly so bright as daylight but more than sufficient to see and walk by, could not be so easily placed; it came from above, but not from the stars, and no moon could be seen in the darkened sky. Indeed, the light's origin sat in the midst of the garden—the moon itself, amidst the flowers.

Near the center, where many of the winding grass paths met, lay a gigantic wolf, big enough to swallow a normal one whole. His fur was a bright silver which gleamed in the moonlight; his eyes, not visible just now, a fierce, bright yellow. He was curled up, relaxed and even seemingly asleep, the only real clue to his true alertness his ears raised to listen intently to the surroundings. Atop that wolf, as though on a great fluffy throne, sat a beautiful woman: Tall, curvy, with deep blue eyes and brilliant silver hair long enough to pool on the grass beneath her and blend with the wolf's fur where they met. She reclined, legs crossed before her, wearing a dress that seemed woven from the nature surrounding her which, while quite long, left precious little to the imagination.

All was still and serene, quite and unmoving in a seeming eternity of peace, until the wolf's eyes suddenly opened, his head rising slightly off the ground and letting out a quiet, low growl. A small puff of dark smoke had caught his attention, a little dark cloud floating in the air a few feet off the ground where it had appeared: A polite request for audience. The woman raised a hand and ran it across the top of the wolf's head, gently pressing it down; the animal replied with a submissive whine, closing his eyes and relaxing again. Then she nodded to the cloud, giving permission, and so it began to grow and expand, pouring itself in from elsewhere. Soon it took on a humanoid shape, then solidified into a tall, voluptuous woman in a long kimono with fiery red eyes and the ears of a fox. While the remaining smoke dispersed on the wind, a multitude of tails streamed their way out from her back, writing around and across each other like so many tentacles.

“Welcome,” the woman on the wolf said once she was fully formed. “What brings you here, little fox?”

“Well, I can never resist a look at you around the full moon,” the fox-goddess said, gliding slowly forward before taking a seat on the ground just in front of her host.
She chuckled in response. “You say that about every phase.”
“Only because it is true, La Lune,” she replied with a mischievous grin.
“But there is something else on your mind,” said the woman on the wolf.
“Oh, you know. Curiosity, the same as always.”

La Lune nodded. “Well then, what would you like to know?”
“Everyone was astounded when you announced your disposition toward the new arrival—no less myself. I fully expected you to take your brother's side on this matter. After all, since ascending she's done nothing but sow the seeds of chaos and change all around herself. Her actions defy and distort the natural state of things—and hardly seem like any sort of promotion of balance.”

“Hmn. Why are you on her side?” the moon goddess asked, rather than answering the implied question right away.

“Me?” The Kitsune smirked. “Because she's fun! You know that's all I need. I look forward to seeing what she'll do without restrictions or shackles, how she'll develop with minimal meddling or especially attacks from all the rest of us. Besides, it'd be nice to have another of our number who still remembers what it's like to be mortal. I think she has the potential to spread some real chaos far and wide, maybe even make the Veil itself untenable given enough latitude.”
“You never were in favor of that thing,” La Lune commented.

“I warmed up to it for a while. My people were certainly more able to flourish in a world not so keenly aware of them. But then we all saw the disaster that it led to half a century ago,” she said. “Some still blame me, despite your assurances that I couldn't have been responsible, because it was just as I predicted. We wouldn't be needing to keep it up to prevent a repeat performance if we'd never committed to creating it, or making it so strong, in the first place.”

“So—why are you on her side?” the fox-goddess said, returning to the topic at hand by asking the question directly this time. “Do you know something I don't?”
“A great many things, little fox,” La Lune said teasingly, with a small smile. “I can't tell you everything, or I'd lose that air of mystery you like so much. But as for her—I've been watching the world most carefully this past several years.”
“Hmn. You never seem so keen to make grand plans and schemes, and you don't have to answer 'your people' quite so constantly as I do mine, so I suppose you've had more time to be so attentive.”
The woman on the wolf nodded. “I began to notice something, and paid special attention to see whether or not I was right.”

“What's that, now?”

“Have you noticed—despite not having a part in her followers' pre-emptive descriptions, and despite not being naturally or obviously a result of their beliefs or her own original personality..she has a strong propensity toward change? Some who desire it, unconsciously or not, found themselves drawn to her for that reason, before she even was.”
“That hasn't entirely escaped my attention; it's part of what I like so much,” the fox-goddess said with another smirk. “But—” it turned to a thoughtful frown—“no, I suppose I didn't think much of it.”

“The world, at least that part of it beyond the Veil, has been more interested in change than it ever was before,” La Lune said. “People desire and enjoy finding ways to change themselves, or sometimes others. In the time of relative peace and convenience, it's something magic can give people that the mundane world truly cannot. Your kind is no small part of this, but—even if none of you were around, or cared for its like, the number involved in such things would remain staggering, compared to previous centuries.”

“Hmm. And change—of course—is a small part of any of our aspects, if a part at all. Alteration of form is a natural part of my kind's powers, always has been, but that could never account for a multitude of other people looking to do the same.” The Kitsune nodded, thinking to herself more. “So—correct me if I'm wrong but—you believe this is an 'inevitability'. That the world 'desires' it?”
La Lune nodded. “Remove her, and another will only rise to take her place. While there was a particularly rare alignment of events and persons leading to this particular person and appearance taking on that nature and aspect, it would have been less than three decades, I believe, even without their help.”

“And you've been watching her as well, I trust,” the fox-goddess said. “She is awfully 'nice' about everything. At least for now, she appears to be friendly, and likely to want a good relationship with the rest of us eventually rather than to attempt to destroy or depower us.”
La Lune nodded. “An aspect of change and reversal could be dangerous to even us, in the hands of someone who bore hatred. I think that I would likely be beyond the reach of such a thing, but many I like—such as yourself—would be well within it. At any rate, it appears foolish to me to worry about her in view of what else appeared just last week.”
The Kitsune's eyes gleamed slightly. “You've been keeping an eye on that too, have you? I'm very interested to know how it progresses. He's bound to find out about us eventually if his power keeps peeling the Veil off, and anyway I hardly think a power like the one you described 'cares' whether its owner knows about something or not.”

“Much like the new arrival, however, he seems nice,” La Lune said. “In view of something which was able to simply tell my brother 'no' and preemptively repel any further interference from the rest of us—all in an instinctive response while he was asleep—seeing it in the hands of someone who wants to be harmless could only be a comfort.”

“..Well, that's as much business as I think I can stand,” the fox-goddess said, rising to her feet with another smirk. “Shall I take my leave, or..?”
La Lune nodded—to the latter option. The woman leaned back entirely onto the wolf and sank inside its fur, causing it to shrink and change to the shape of a green-eyed werewolf woman with similar proportions to her, though with a bit more height and a lot more muscle. She pulled herself up onto her feet, standing a head and a half or so taller than the Kitsune with her tail wagging eagerly. “You know I can only stand to be formal for so long too,” she said, and pounced, knocking her guest over onto her back.