| When the inclemency of winter, with its blustery weather, makes it impossible for me to go outside, I then become dispirited, for I am forced, reluctantly, to spend my days inside. Excepting on the rare occasion, when a-calling I do go, to my favorite haunt by far, to the enigmatic and ancient abode, of its analagous matron: my beloved Grandmamma I've told you once, or so I believe, of my Great Aunt Lucretia, and her ebony-posted bed; but have I mentioned my Great Uncle Luvian, who donned a pelt, which made him lose his head? It all began when my errant Uncle came home, after a year's excursion in France. He brought with him a woman, a Mlle. Grenier, at whose comely visage he would stare, as if in a trance. They would spend their days in bookshops which were shunned by most of the town Purchased grimoires and sundry treatises by scribes of nefarious renown, When nightfall came round they could not be found in or around the estate. Till it was rumored by some that they were in consortium with brokers from beyond the seven gates. When Luvian, confronted by all, was asked about where they had been, he'd simply smile, and look towards his wife, with her circean eyes so green. The shepherds, they'd come by complaining, of slain or missing sheep. Great Uncle told them to have more care and vigilance over their keep. The talk got hotter by the day, but none accused him, yet, outright. Though when they found the riven remnants of a boy, it set the town alight. It seems a canid creature of, truculent bent, rent the child assunder, and after opening his unfledged chest, his sappy heart did plunder. That night, the townsfolk stormed the house, demanding to see their lord. They found him gone, and took to the woods with pitchfork, gun and sword. Out in the umbrage of the night, they searched with torches aflame. Following the sound of an unholy thing, howling in ululame. They soon found the source of the stentorian yowls, lamenting as in keen, the death of its mate, whose incarnadine bowels flowed as in a stream. The Lycanthrope turned round to stare, his jaws with gore imbrued. resignedly accepting the retribution which ensued. They smote his head in one fell swoop, and shot him through the heart with bullets forged from molten silver, made of a crucifix part. When his corpse fell to the ground, his lupine form had changed into the shell of Luvian, though this they thought not strange. He bore no clothes save for a belt, made from a werewolf's hide. For which he'd sold his immortal soul, to be collected when he died. So it was that ravens came, at the moment of his death, to claim his soul and bear it to the land of fiery depth. They took as well the sullied soul of his sorceress wife whom he had slain for starting him on this wicked life. But in the hubbub of his death, an agile hand unseen, the pelt, had taken leaving no clue as to who it might have been. Now I hold it in my hands, to place it round my waist. Where Luvian failed, a weak-willed man, a woman shall take his place. And do the job that should have made his consort teacher proud, so she'll be goaded then to rise, and shirk her ancient shroud. To share with me her secret rites, and knowledge long retained, which Luvian could not comprehend, and proved to be his bane. And all of this I owe to she whom, heedful of its special powers, pulled the pelt to pass to me, her clever budding flower. My Grandmamma shall not regret the choice which she has made of making a shapeshifting priestess out of a fledling maid. |