Editing New Ways Old Grudges Werewolf Thomas Background

=Background=

==Pup Life==

There was no moon in the sky when this werewolf was born, since he was born at high noon in the middle of summer on a roadside in Montana. His pregnant mother had just narrowly avoided being hit by a car and the stress caused her to go into labor. Four pups emerged on that scorching Montana afternoon - the pup who would one day become Thomas, a brother and two sisters. He sometimes explains his dark skin and fur as the sun cooking him that color - and sometimes because the sun challenged the moon for him when he was born. Born at the time of the joker's moon if not under the empty night sky it should have been in, his sense of humor is bone-dry and vicious - something suited for life in the hard, rural badlands.

But that's now, with more years on him. Then, it was all about hunting mice and rolling around in the grass with his brother and sisters, nipping ears and chewing on paws. Their mother was always there, and their father usually - or so he seemed to be. Their den in a shallow cave in a hillside by the river was isolated, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Occasionally, the big things that floated by in the river threw things towards where they lived, so he took to hiding in the bushes when he saw them and stayed there until they were well out of sight. One of his sisters was hit by something once and whimpered about it for a while. That led to his first encounter with a wolf outside the family - where his father was jet-black just like him and his mother mostly black with some white patches, this wolf was almost bone-colored with a spattering of grey. And he was big - bigger than the pup's father. The pup whimpered and sniffed the stranger wolf very carefully, not understanding what they were communicating to one another. Then the other wolf went away.

When he got a little bigger, he started roaming with the rest of his family - instead of mice in a cave, now he started trying to creep up on small birds and rabbits. Once in a while he even caught one, although most of the time they spotted him coming and got away. One day they were really far from home, the farthest he had ever been up to that point, when they came to what he later found out was a boundary fence. On the other side of it were huge animals - much bigger than him, or his mother, or his father, or even the big wolf he remembered. They had horns, ate grass, and made a noise that, to the young wolf, sounded like, "Eat me." His mother kept him from trying to get under the fence, but the idea was in his head. It was and is one of the first ideas he can remember having.

As time went on, he realized there were a lot of these things all over the place - not so many near their home, but lots farther out. Fences and mooing animals - and other creatures that made loud noises and had sticks that made louder noises. His mother, brother and sisters were terrified - the wolf that would be Thomas was scared, but not so scared as to run in a blind panic at the sound. He ran and hid and watched, and when the animal with the stick left he came back and sniffed around. Eventually he started leaving the den at night while the others slept, creeping away from the pile of snoozing wolves to go sneaking around the fences and looking for ways in. He remembers being able to do this a lot of times without any problems, then there was the time he was not so careful about the light.

He knew how the sun and the moon worked - one was hot, the other wasn't, one made the world light, the other made it dark. What he didn't know was that the animals on two legs could make their own little suns, ones that would light up when he didn't expect it. He knew the two-legged animals lived in big stumps that were strangely shaped and smooth, but they never spent the night in the smaller stumps that had the animal noises coming out of them. He also knew that the noises some of the animals made in there also sounded like "eat me". He was about to get through a door and into a chicken coop when the world went light like in mid-day and loud noises came from inside the big stump. He didn't know what it was, and this time complete survival instinct took over. He took off through the hole in the fence as thunder crashed behind him and something zipped past his ears like angry bees. He later felt like he had run all the way to the river without taking a breath.

He waited for a while, hoping the animal would forget. But just to be safe, he tried a different territory, one where the fence was a little lower. He waited for nightfall and a lucky break happened - one of the fat birds that didn't fly came out of its den, and got too close to the fence. A great leap in, a startled squawk, and a great leap out, and he tore off across the prairie with the dying chicken in his mouth, feebly fighting to save itself. He got in trouble later - his father found feathers on him that didn't come from a normal bird and attacked him. He didn't understand why at the time, although he realized much later - trying to dissuade an errant pup from getting himself killed stealing from ranchers.

It didn't take, though. He just got sneakier about it, and after another near-death experience with what he later found out were twelve-gauge shotguns he didn't take direct routes back to their den, always going to a river and jumping in, then swimming for a while and jumping back out to go home. Not only would it confuse anything following him, it washed off feathers and smells.

==First Change==

Then there was the incident on the big farm. He had gone from jumping fences and stealing chickens to breaking and entering, creeping into barns and sneaking around farm equipment sheds. He didn't know what any of it was or what it did (although he once got a nasty gash on his back from a pair of shears he knocked off a shelf), but the fact it was there fascinated him, and that he was breaking some kind of rule being there was more fascinating. Eventually decided to try his hand at getting into Big Bill Paulsen's second barn. Bill was a successful farmer and rancher, but wolf-who-would-be-Tom had noticed that one of his barns never seemed to open. He had taken to creeping around at dawn and dusk because a black wolf stood out at noon, but long shadows hid him - the man always came out of and went back into one barn, and only very rarely did he do anything with the other barn. Plus some nights there were lots more men there, and noises that sounded like wolves' growls. He resolved to investigate.

Getting past the guard wasn't too difficult - he found a low spot in the fence, jumped it, and circled around behind the barn. Evidently there wasn't much fear of being found out. The closer he got the more noise he heard - by the time he was right up against the door, he was sure he could open it without being noticed. He was right - and then he found out why. Must have been fifty men crowded around a cinder block pit ten feet deep with two bull mastiff crossbreeds tearing strips out of each other's faces in the middle. Bill's barn had equipment all right - chains, prods, choker sticks, all stuff you might conceivably find on a ranch. Or next to a dogfighter's arena. Tom was almost ready to spit and leave when one dog howled and collapsed. The place erupted - the half that bet on the other dog yelling for their winnings, while the other half insulted their mothers. That wasn't even the worst of it - the worst was when Big Bill Paulsen, massively strong from years on the farm, got one of the choker sticks, somehow managed to reach down and pick up the downed dog by its neck, and draped the stick across his harvester - hanging the dog on the end of it like a hundred-pound pinata. Then everything went black.

To this day nobody knows exactly what went on in Bill Paulsen's barn - the authorities and most of the survivors eventually settled on, "Some dumbass brought coydogs and they went berserk." How Bill Paulsen had wound up nearly crucified on his own harvester was never satisfactorily explained, although the general agreement seemed to have been "somebody found out he fixed a match and didn't like it". Tom, meanwhile, had somehow managed to get the crippled dog to the next farmhouse - five miles away over broken ground. After leaving the dog on their porch and scratching at the door himself, he took off for the hills and left the farmer to call the authorities. To this day he is one of the few werewolves who doesn't mind dogs - or at least he'll defend dogs that are good and strong and work hard, instead of heinously inbred pocket pooches.

==Cub Time and Rite of Passage==

Things being what they are in the world, there was not as much time for the sept to tutor the young wolf-born on how to be a werewolf, much less how to impersonate a human, as they wanted. Just getting him to wear pants was an experience, especially once he found out that humans are easily startled when someone suddenly takes his off in front of them. It was also his first experience with trying to learn as people do - with words and gestures with the hands, rather than growls and extended snorts. One of these lessons was where he first ran into Jay Crowfeather, and they slowly became conspiratorial friends. Where Thomas was amused at Jay's inability with four paws, Jay was amused at Thomas' basic mistakes with human behavior. After slowly managing to talk the leery wolf-born into a car, Jay put on the child locks and went to the drive through at Burger King - the noise made by the squawking intercom box nearly sent Thomas into a blind panic, while it was all his friend could do to hold it together and get a cheeseburger. Thomas eventually got revenge, but seeing as how most of the sept, like most of almost all septs, is homid-born, the Burger King story had much more staying power with others.

A couple of seasons passed, and it was winter when tribal elders decided that it was time for Tom and Jay to go through their Rite of Passage. With a consideration for sept priorities, it was to be a "functional" Rite of Passage - one with little physical risk, but the possibility existed for something to go seriously wrong. It was no secret at the time that BNSF, the Burlington North Santa Fe railroad, wanted to expand in the area of the sept. But what was a secret was where the new lines were going to be installed, and the obtaining of them deemed important. Unbeknownst to Thomas and Jay, Uktena soothsayers and Theurges had been consulted and the ritemasters knew there was no threat to the bawn from the railroad, so they were able to put more focus on the Rite and the cubs' performance than assigning the task to older and smarter werewolves. Given the task at daylight, they were given twelve hours to plan. Since Jay did not normally spend time in Williston, he had no idea about the layout, so they drove to Williston and spent several hours planning.

Fortunately for them, at least by some measure, the office was near a couple of strip clubs - although Thomas sort of understood the concept, Jay, as a 17-year-old boy, immediately realized the possible usefulness of this. He quickly explained a plan and then spent three times as long explaining how it was going to work - fortunately for their futures as werewolves it was not a long plan. Plan made and accepted, along with Thomas agreeing to shoulder most of the physical risk, they put it into action.

The front door to the office was usually locked, but as it happened the outdoor security guard was a smoker, and there was a side door to a smoking area. Round about 10 PM, long after the sun had sunk on the frigid winter night, Jay went from one small storefront to the next, knocking on doors and waiting for answers. He got a few - surly night watchmen, mostly - and shook their hands, handing them freebie cards he had palmed from the strip clubs. Thomas crept through alleys on four paws to get to where and when he needed to be unnoticed - twenty feet from the side door five minutes before Jay showed up, as agreed. Fortunately the cold air somewhat muted Thomas' sense of smell, otherwise the reek from three days of garbage would have made him snort and sneeze. The guard appeared to smoke, and Jay made a big show of getting his attention - both to distract him and to ensure the guard knew he was there and was less inclined to pull a gun on him. As soon as this happened and the guard moved away from the door, Thomas darted towards it and slipped inside with surprising quiet.

Taking precious seconds to change shape, he found the door to a vice-director's office unlocked and crept in. Jay had explained to him what a CD looked like, especially the one that was supposed to have the plans on it. Thomas found it with remarkable speed, then made for the door and suddenly realized he had a problem - the CD was not dedicated to him and he had no confidence in his sneaking ability as a human. A few heart-pounding moments later, he decided that he was most comfortable in his own flesh and reverted to walking on four paws with the CD tucked into his mouth as delicately as he could manage.

It was fortunate for Jay that he had made it quick, because the guard was getting bored of the kid and was about to tase him just to liven up his evening. Thomas crept out the door, made eye contact with his partner, and darted for an alleyway, knocking the door wide open. The guard whipped around, expecting burglars, as Jay picked that time to make his exit. Thomas made sure to draw more attention by knocking over a trash can while sprinting down an alley - after waiting for the guard to run past while calling someone on a phone, the CD-carrying wolf loped through tall grass and over Riverside Drive. It was cold enough for the river to freeze at least in places, and he had every intention of running across the frozen surface to the other side and meeting up with Jay at their prearranged meeting place.

Running through tall grass and about to set out onto the frozen river, he was completely surprised when another wolf careened out of the brush and knocked him sprawling. Upright in a flash, CD forgotten where it fell, he snarled and bared his teeth, about to pounce on the stranger when he saw it changing shape and assuming a dominant but nonhostile stance. His ears perked back up as he recognized one of the Ritemasters, who picked up the CD and chuckled. "Good one, son." Then he picked up a stone and flicked it across the ice - it went about thirty feet, then slowed and fell through. "Ice is about as thick as a leaf right about there. Can't have you freezing yourself to death. Think about that when you have to do something like this again. Come on." He changed shape and padded away, with the younger werewolf in tow.

Back on the bawn, they met up with Jay and the other Ritemaster. Once Jay saw the CD he grinned and flashed something shiny that Thomas did not immediately recognize - the guard's $80 cigarette lighter. The Uktena who had fetched Thomas hadn't seen this and whistled in amusement. "Alright. Wait here while we talk about this." The Ritemasters went off for a time, during which Jay and Thomas mostly lay down and felt relieved - even though Thomas knew the test played more to Jay's strengths than his, he also knew his friend had not had an easy job either. After a half-hour or so the Ritemasters came back and the two younger werewolves sat up.

The male of the two said, "Well done. Not the way I would choose to do it, but you succeeded and no laws were broken - no laws we care about, anyway." The female coughed and the male, acknowledging without words, said, "I, Grey Sky Heralds the Storm, Athro Lawgiver of our people, speaking for myself and Clear Sky Over Still Waters, Adren Talesinger of our people, have consulted with the spirits as our people have always done here. We watched you, we listened to you, and we judged you. You have a lot to learn and practice and do, but you showed that you can carry out what you have learned so far." Wind whistled in the long grass and blew the first fat snowflakes of a winter night's storm through the little group's hair. He gestured. "Stand up." The two young werewolves stood, Jay on two legs and Thomas on four. Pulling a small wad of burnt leaves from a leather bag, Grey Sky drew thick lines across Jay's forehead and cheeks, then knelt and did the same across Thomas', though the black ash did not show. To the young man, he said, "From now on, you will be known as Magpie's Envy." The young man's chest visibly swelled and he stood a little straighter, then nodded. To the young wolf, Grey Sky said, "From now on, you will be known as Uktena's Gentle Touch." The wolf flattened his ears and lowered his head, grateful. Clear Sky Over Still Waters, who had not said an actual word throughout the short ceremony, watched him out of the corner of her eye.

He stepped back and said, "Our people do not make a habit of excess celebration, on many levels we cannot afford it and it offends some of our less material allies - especially the jealous ones." He raised his arms and added, "Although tonight we can afford to celebrate a little." The conjured cloak of total darkness fell, revealing several smiling Uktena, older and younger, one or two from the sept and some from others, as well as a number of Kinfolk, a long table set with food, and a cold firepit with a whole sheep on a skewer over it. "I saw that fancy lighter, son, get over here and show your elders you didn't steal a piece of junk," one of the other werewolves called, and added, "It's cold out." Thomas celebrated with the others, enjoying himself as he never had, eating a fire-roasted sheep haunch and discovering that cooked meat could be tasty. He even spent time on two legs, trying to explain with his hands and words what it was like to live on four and mostly failing. All the while, Clear Sky kept one eye or one ear on him, gauging and thinking. ''We will see,'' she said to herself.

==The Present Day==

(To Be Added)


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