The bucket of spring water sloshed softly as Fian set it down on the wooden decking in front of the hut.
His lower lip was split, his left eye was a swollen mass of blue and violet, and every rib burned with each breath. He crept slowly through the doorway to clean up his worst injuries, making his way to the washing area in his garden. As he stepped out into the garden, his white lady wolf was sitting in the morning sun. She didn’t even look up as he approached, though her nose twitched when she caught the scent of fresh blood. “What happened?” she asked, her tone a mix of curiosity and indifference. Fian turned away, trying to salvage some pride. “Nothing…” he replied. As she stood up and studied his battered face, her eyes narrowed into slits: “You went to fetch water from the spring. What happened?” Fian looked away, but she roughly grabbed his jaw, forcing him to meet her gaze. “I’m waiting…” she breathed.
“Oh, just that moronic boar,” Fian forced out, wiping a trickle of blood from his cheek and trying to stand as tall as possible. “He… wasn’t drunk anymore.” The wolf remained silent for a long heartbeat.
Then, a soft, almost inaudible sigh escaped her. “Well,” she murmured dryly. “I assumed he’d have filled his head with so much mead that, by this morning, he wouldn’t even know whether he had bristles or scales. My mistake.”
She stood up, smoothed her flank with a fluid motion, and stepped toward him. “You’re staying here. In the garden. Behind the fence.” Fian snorted softly. “This is *my* house. And *my* garden.” “I never denied that. And it’s *your* health at stake if you run to the well without protection again,” she retorted with the kind of matter-of-factness that brooked no argument. “Sit in the grass. I’ll handle this.”
A few hours later, the heavy bolt on the cottage door rattled.
Fian was sitting in the shade of an apple tree in his garden—leather collar snug around his neck, head resting against the trunk—playing his lute with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The bruises from earlier that morning were beginning to throb, which did little to improve his mood. At least he was glad he wasn’t sitting there alone anymore when he heard the lady wolf’s voice.
She stepped through the back garden door of his cottage. Beside her stood an old, massive wolf with a muzzle streaked in deep gray. While his ears bore the notches of countless old battles, his eyes radiated a calm, almost benevolent wisdom. The lady wolf spoke to the elder in a tone Fian had never heard from her before—quiet, gentle, affectionate, and almost reverent. “Thank you for coming, Fresco,” she said softly. “For my favorite pup? Always, Vel,” the old wolf rumbled, his voice like grinding scree. “You know I can’t refuse you anything. Besides, I’m curious to see if there’s any truth to the rumors about your latest hunting blunder.” Fresco stopped in the middle of the garden. His eyes wandered slowly from her upright figure down to Fian, who sat battered against the apple tree, wearing a collar and a damp compress on his ribs. The old wolf paused.
A long, deep, dry “Oh…” escaped his throat. He paused in his stride, tilted his head slightly, and slowly turned toward the she-wolf. His expression was a priceless blend of nostalgia and amused curiosity. He playfully nudged her nose with his paw—a silent “Well, what did we miss?…”
“Vel…” the stranger whispered, gesturing vaguely toward Fian. “Don’t tell me that thing over there is your new pet project. Why do you do things like this?” She didn’t blink, though the tips of her ears twitched back. “He has potential, Fresco. Honestly, he just needs a little… guidance. Or encouragement.”
The other wolf briefly pressed a hand to his forehead, as if he had a headache, and said quietly, “Well, if you say so… but honestly, picking a dud like that is so ‘Vel’.” She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow and whispered, “Behave yourself, Fresco.” Then she stepped firmly out of the hut, glanced briefly at Fresco, and said dryly:
“This is Fresco. He’s taking over here temporarily and will instruct you. Meanwhile, I’m going to settle a few outstanding matters.” With that, she turned and walked away. Fresco looked Fian up and down, spotted the collar, and shook his head in bewilderment.
“What’s the matter with this nonsense about a collar?” he called out after her. Vel’s voice echoed back from the hallway: “Wolfish pedagogy! DON’T TOUCH IT!”
The front door slammed shut.
Fresco looked at the battered bard, who was fixing him with a sharp, attentive gaze. “I see…”
Behind the wooden fence, a bark rang out—almost rang out bluntly into the garden: “I MEAN THAT LITERALLY!” Fresco flicked one ear back and called out in reply, “When are you finally going to stop with your ‘notorious Vel-nonsense’ and just attend to your duties like any other wolf?”
“HANDS OFF!” came the snappy retort from behind the fence, followed by silence. Fresco sighed deeply. He had come here because Vel had asked him to take a closer look at her ‘little ones’ and teach them a few things. A favor between old acquaintances—nothing more. But now he stood there, feeling curious gazes upon him, and felt strangely provoked into letting the questions come. And that little bard didn’t say a word, yet his eyes watched the old wolf, waiting… for what, exactly? Finally, Fresco blinked and tilted his head slightly.
The cool leather of the collar fastened around his neck; his left eye was bruised a deep violet and his lip was split—yet an unbearable curiosity burned in his eyes. Fresco wasn’t quite sure what Fian had understood or was thinking. Fian looked directly at the old wolf and dared, shyly and quietly, to break the silence. “May I ask something?” Fresco looked down at him and nodded slowly.
“What is a typical ‘notorious Vel-nonsense’?”
Fresco blinked again, and his ear twitched backward in surprise. There he sat in the grass, wearing a leather collar like a pet, yet unerringly latching onto the one word he wasn’t supposed to hear. “You’ve got some nerve…” Fresco remarked after a moment, shaking his head. For a heartbeat, absolute silence reigned in the garden. The old grey wolf stared at the battered bard, who had just hurled an insult at him in a completely foreign language. Then, a peculiar sound escaped Fresco’s chest—something akin to incredulous astonishment mixed with amusement. And then he simply replied, “Yes.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Because the question is phrased incorrectly.”
Fian looked at the old wolf with wide eyes: “So, what *would* be the right question?”
He took a step closer but stopped just out of Fian’s reach, his brow furrowing into deep, scarred creases. “You asked yourself, after all.” Fian didn’t even blink; he held Fresco’s gaze. Fresco sighed—a deep, rasping sound from the depths of his lungs.
“You’ll have to ask *her* that.” Then he changed the subject. “Anyway, what she asked me to do…”
[…]
Vela returned and opened the door to the cabin. Inside the kitchen, Fresco was sitting and drinking tea. Alone. She walked toward him and asked curiously, “Where is…” – His scathing look told her immediately that something had gone wrong. “Okay, I see you ran into a Fian,” she noted.
He stood up and poured her some tea. “I hope your business is settled?” he deflected with a counter-question, heading toward the garden. Vela looked around. “Fresco? Where’s my Snuffel?” – “Your… *what*? Just so I understand: you’re giving that walking natural disaster a pet name?” He stared at her in disbelief. Her ears perked forward curiously: “Oh, was it that bad?” He glared at her – angrily, yet somehow not quite. “Frankly, I don’t quite know. He was just really trying hard to do the right thing.” Thoroughly annoyed, he sat down by the apple tree in the garden, while Vela settled comfortably into the grass. “Yeah, that’s really fascinating, isn’t it?” She stretched, slowly turned onto her side, rested her chin on her paws, and looked at the old wolf with a subtle, impudent, wolfish grin. “I know that look, old friend,” she said softly. “I had that exact crease in my forehead when he first tried to explain destiny to me. Did he want to discuss the ‘lunar hunting roster’ with you?”
“No, not that… What kind of roster…?” Fresco snorted loudly and shook his head in irritation. “Vel… honestly: He’s an absolute disaster! He’s stubborn, annoying, pigheaded, and completely immune to any sensible advice. And his zealous attempts to get things right… good grief, his efforts to explain the root cause alone are a crime against the very nature of thought itself!” Vela chuckled softly to herself. “True. But you’ve noticed the way he looks at things when left to his own devices, right? Or – what I find even more fascinating – the conclusions he draws? They’re either frighteningly close to reality or…” “Yes, exactly—*or*! You’ve hit the nail on the head. Either he sees everything correctly and logically arrives at a fundamentally wrong conclusion – which, to make matters worse, is right from his perspective – or he goes off on some bizarre tangent in the entirely wrong direction, reaching a conclusion that’s utterly insane but works so well in the end that you just have to let it stand, however grudgingly.” Fresco grumbled grimly but couldn’t help nodding—albeit through gritted teeth. “Damn him… yeah. I bet once you figure out how to handle and guide him properly, the guy is surprisingly open-minded and eager to learn. But the twisted loops his mind runs in beforehand are enough to drive you mad!”
“I know,” Vel murmured with amusement, stretching out further into the moss and closing her eyes. “Welcome to the club, old friend. And you know what the best part is right now?” Fresco looked at Vela with annoyance as she stretched luxuriously in the moss, and said, “You sent him off to handle something. And for this moment, *you* are in charge…” She gave an affirmative twitch of her ear. “Yes. You are.” And she closed her eyes. After a while, she asked teasingly, “Well?”
Fresco growled. “No ‘well’ about it. He’s coming back.”
She nodded. “Probably.”
He glanced her way, annoyed. “It’s only been an hour. Relax!”
Vela replied affirmatively, her eyes still closed: “Mhm. And if it takes longer, he’ll find his way back here without getting into trouble.” Now it was Fresco who snapped back: “And even if something *had* happened, he’d find someone to help.”
Vela stretched luxuriously in the cool moss. “You like him, don’t you?”
Before he could say anything, she sat up and looked at Fresco knowingly with her blue eyes. “Let me guess: if I asked you why, the answer would simply be ‘because’ – you never know if it’s a lapse in judgment or a stroke of genius.” Fresco thought for a moment, then said dryly, “When you asked him about the business with the boar, what did he say?”
She looked at him. “He admitted it was stupid. And that he’d overlooked something.” “And if I asked him today?” She flattened her ears and asked, “Do you really want to know?” He nodded, and she thought for a moment. Then she answered with a teasing smile: “I think it went something like, ‘The boar was the consequence of a complex chain of events potentially linked to responsibility, loyalty, tavern culture, and my own decisions’…”
Fresco raised a paw, and Vela stopped talking. “That’s total nonsense!”
She lay back down and grinned smugly. “Well. Don’t ask him. And you know what? I’ve learned to go and wait until *he* asks *me*. And as for questions—he’ll ask.” Fresco looked slightly pensive. “ Well, given what he told me about the forest lake, He promised to trust you, he will not ask why I am here or what you have done with that boar to clarify his safety.”
Then he raised his teacup and toasted Vela: “To the little pain in the neck.”
