on wolves and witches and gold;

[mite]

Two out of three are bad news, lady, you've got bad numbers for me here. I like gold, not like the other stuff. I'm just a girl who's trying to make her way through the world — I can't do that if you put all the creepy crawly horrors on the same road as me! You can't sell anything with a rep like that, lady, no.

Look, I'm rooting for Red like every other person out there but I'm not gonna be her knight in shining armor. I hate armor, that stuff weighs you down. She needs anything fenced or traded over the border then I'm her girl, but I'm not doing any fighting for anyone. I love her, but I don't care about the war as much as you seem to think I do.

Sorry.

Comments

[lured]

Doesn't sound like we're from the same patch of the Hundred Acre Woods, little lady, but I ain't never been one to put wolves under the category of creepy crawlies.

[mite]

Wolves where you're from, they never get fleas? Because the ones I know, they do, and those totally count. Besides, "crouching creepers" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, while "moody monsters" just sounds weak.

What's your interest in wolves?

[lured]

[ Mildly: ] Oh, I dunno, I like "moody monsters". Reminds of that one song they always play around Halloween.

Chased a girl called Red a while back. Had a pretty good time of it.

[mite]

Songs during the Harvest, huh? Come to think of it, it'd be pretty funny to see monsters crying their eyes out. Preferably not literally.

[ She's built her career on her instincts, and her instincts are telling her to get ready to run. Would a silver knife get her any mileage? Silver often works back home, it's gotten her a good fortune because of all the silverware she's hoarded, but this isn't the Valley. The rules are probably different here. ]

Why were you chasing her?

[lured]

I'd pay the admission fee.

[ Silver, steel, wood — anything'll work on Mr. Wolf; that is, only temporarily. That's the way his song cycle works. He dies or Red dies, but they come back, time and time again, to relive the story and see exactly how many endings they can find.

Alyse, he'll admit, looks like a hell of a dish, but he doesn't go around cutting his teeth on everyone he sees. ]

She took my fancy. And my hide, a couple'a times. Gotta say I liked that a little less.

[mite]

...They sometimes do that. I mean, there's been more than one to take that name, at least where I'm from.

[ She's been wrong before, because assumptions about people is not the province of her skills - and she's certain that somewhere out there Hatter is still paying hunters to bring him her head - but she'd rather be wrong than correct on this one.

Wolves are the worst to deal with. They have land, they have teeth, they have packs, they have blood magic inside them. If the cap hadn't been worth more than all the silver in the Valley combined, Alyse would have never helped Little Red find her way out of the woods at all.

Please don't be a wolf. ]

I hope it didn't hurt too bad?

[lured]

[ If Big Bad can tell what it is that Alyse is thinking, he doesn't give it up one way or the other, instead just offering up a quick smile and a shrug. Given the wrong (or right, depending on one's perspective) set of circumstances, there's no one who couldn't skin him alive; despite the years he's spend trawling the world, he isn't so arrogant as to have forgotten that.

(In the end, maybe that's what sets him apart from the proverbial pack; in terms of traveling companions, it's always been Red or bust.) ]

Not the worst I been through, I guess, [ he says, tucking his hands into his pockets. ] Wouldn't choose it as an option again, though.

[mite]

[ It's always the older (older) men who give her grief, imagined and otherwise. She mirrors him in posture and gesture, wrapping her fingers around the gilt handle of the knife in her jacket pocket. It's a light little sliver of silver and iron; fits into the palm of a small girl nicely, and its weight in her hands is a comfort she never fails to draw from.

Bouncing a couple times on heels, she replies: ] If you're getting skinned more than once, you probably should switch careers.

[lured]

[ (He reflects, briefly, that Red had been about that same age when she'd first gotten the huntsman to come along and cut a hole in his belly. They usually make it a little longer these days, get a little older before they try to tear each other apart.)

That gets a grin from him, teeth bared — too sharp, too white — for just a single instant. ]

Well, lemme put it this way: love the job, even if I could do without the pitfalls. The latter ain't quite enough to put me off completely.

[mite]

Pitfalls. You'd call getting stuffed with rocks a pitfall?

[ Tread lightly with wolves, she's always told. Giants and dragons and fairies, they don't need to live with us. But the wolves feed on earth the same as we do. They don't trade for gold, they certainly won't buy your silver, and they've got the meanest bite if they ever catch you.

She knows that. She doesn't follow up on the advice most the time, and that's one of her many problems lately. ]

[lured]

[ He laughs (barks) just the once. Wolves may be dangerous, but girls are, too. (Heaven knows he's always been more on guard than he's ever been with the woodsman.) His hands trail down the lengths of her arms to the hands she has in her pockets and he wonders how long it'd take to set the course of this particular story off entirely. He's only ever been supposed to have eyes for one filly, but getting hungry isn't the kind of thing that discerns between meals. ]

Means to an end, little sis. Doesn't feel as sweet if you haven't suffered a little for your art.

[mite]

[ Clothes are funny things - they're an often-flimsy layer that protects you from dirt, but rarely does it protect you from anything else. Hands (or claws or teeth or fangs) could easily rend through a sleeve, and clothes certainly don't protect you from gravity if the birds catch you and throw you down the Valley.

She grits her teeth against the flinch and shiver rolling under skin, and grips her knife until she feels her knuckles must have turned white. She doesn't step back.

(Wolves chase you if you do.) ]

Oh, I don't know. Getting skinned doesn't sound like it's just a little suffering. It sounds a lot painful, if you ask me.

[lured]

[ In turn, he chances his posture to something a little easier, the bulk of his weight resting on one foot. ]

Maybe that's love, [ he says, without pretense and without shame. It's been a long time, after all – pain is temporary but the story lasts forever. Who knows who wrote it first, but they've been this way, Red and the Big Bad Wolf, since the beginning of time. ] You do funny things, once your heart flies away from you. Maudlin, sure, but it's true.

[mite]

Love is for witches and princes.

[ And princesses, and children, and stupid commonfolk who think that the stories are in the heroes' favor all the time. Robin should be here instead of her, she thinks; he gets his sister back, and she gets a target painted on the back of Red's lovely red cap—

That she stole, and wears under her jacket, because there's nowhere else she trusts to hide it in. So perhaps she half-deserves to be here, too. ]

I mean, how do you know if you love someone? How is love different from just wanting everything they have, bones and organs included?

[lured]

I don't chase her 'cause I want to eat her, if that's what you mean, [ he answers, sounding faintly amused. ] Besides, it's her chasing me half of the time.

[ He sighs, then, mouth twisting as he considers an answer. (It makes him a fool, he knows, to think this way. But he's paid the price a hundred fold and he doesn't mind it. Besides, there's been no one else who's ever been able to get the jump on him.) ]

It's like being on trains that run the same route, just going in opposite directions. You know you're gonna meet some day, you know the track's gonna run out on you eventually. And you're fine with it. Doesn't matter what detours you take so long as you end up in the same place. You ever felt that?

[mite]

Not the way you describe it, no.

[ Don't mind her if she takes a couple steps back now. This conversation is making her feel like a small child, smaller than she already is. ]

Things like love and fame and happiness, witches can sell you on the idea, maybe even sell you a bottle of everlasting love if you have the gold for it. I don't trust it. If I can't hold it or see it, then it's not real.

And you can never trust trains, mister. Too many doors.

—Hey wait, why would she chase you? [ The whole point of Red was to get chased, wasn't it? ]

[lured]

[ Wolf shifts his weight, but doesn't step forward. (It seems that he's given up on the notion of a bite, at least for the moment.) ]

Wolves ain't the only ones who can hunt. Sometimes, that girl gets the notion of revenge in her head, she gets more dangerous than claws and fangs. Nothing not to like about a nice fur to keep you warm in the winter.

[mite]

Hmm. Furs are nice, that's true. Never heard of a Red who chased wolves before, though. Maybe mine should try that one day, if she's still around.

[ Skipping back on her heels, and Alyse does a turn like one might when dancing; this place is wide, and huge, and the possibilities are quite endless. There must be so many doors here that she could go through, given the chance. ]

So do you have a name, or does she give you one? I'm Alyse, by the way. I'm from the outskirts, but I doubt that means anything here.

[lured]

[ With a contemplative sort of hum, he shifts his weight from foot to foot — this time around, his smile is close-lipped. ]

Big Bad, Mr. Wolf, any variation on the old name. Whatever tickles your fancy, Miss Alyse. And I can't say outskirts means anything to me, but it's a big ol' world out there.