Weekly Drabble #267: Harvest Moon (Patreon)

This week's prompt is from Knightress with 'pumpkin' and rather than making a Lannister-esque joke, I decided to go with something closer to the spirit of the season. Enjoy!

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Harvest Moon:

It was a cool autumn night and though she’d normally be in bed at this hour, Meredith was out for a walk. Her home was on the edge of town, with a small amount of land. A garden that could keep her fed through the summer and fall, and a handful of chickens for eggs and meat. It was a fine little home, and she liked it quite well. The town was neither terribly large nor terribly small, with a good number of people and frequent travellers coming through. Overall, it was a good place to live, despite the rumours.

It was unsafe these days to walk alone at night. There was some great beast about, the villagers said. It was killing their livestock and leaving mutilated carcasses of wild animals in the forest. That was only partially true. Fraydrich had (mostly) stopped attacking the farmers’ herds and it wasn’t even his fault. A werewolf’s instincts were hard to master. The change was painful and exhausting and left them disoriented and ravenous; it was little wonder that it was considered a curse.

Fraydrich did better than some. He had never harmed anyone, whereas he’d told her some werewolves exclusively preyed upon humans, even if they got control of themselves. In point of fact, some enjoyed it. The thought terrified her and she was glad such things were but a fraction of a population already so small as to be thought little more than legends. Fraydich had only suffered the curse for a handful of years before he’d met her, but he didn’t talk much about how it had happened to him and Meredith didn’t pry. It was a painful memory for him, and from what he had said, for more than one reason.

She didn’t push, even though she was very curious about it all. Fraydrich himself didn’t know everything about his fellow lycanthropes, but since the first night when she’d snuck out and spied upon him, he had started to get better control of his monstrous form. He still wasn’t himself in the nights around the full moon, but he was... better. Not a man, but less a beast. Not all werewolves were the same, he’d told her. Some never could master themselves during the change. Some found it easy. It was a struggle for him, but he’d admitted once that her presence broke through the red fog of instinct.

That made sense to her; she’d once heard from the town’s old doctor that scent was the actually the strongest sense given to humans, more closely linked to memory than any other. She’d never really understood how that could be, but watching the wariness and hunger in Fraydich’s red eyes fade away when he sniffed her made her believe it. In the few months after her indiscretion, she’d given Fraydrich an article of her clothing or a towel she’d used after a bath to take with him – she’d been forbidden from following him again and couldn’t really blame him for his ire and concern.

He said it helped. He usually recalled little of what he did when he changed, but the reminder of her presence helped him retain some measure of awareness of himself and what he’d done. It took a while longer before he’d agreed to let her accompany him again and at first only with certain conditions. She hadn’t needed any of the contingencies and she’d been very mindful of what he required of her to let her come. She wouldn’t break his trust a second time. But she’d been right; he was different now. She remembered him pressing his muzzle into her chest as she scratched the dark fur on his head, laying against him as he slept in the moonlight. There were frightening memories too, but he’d never hurt her. No more than a bump or a bruise, at any rate.

She remembered her father’s lessons; never run unless you knew you could get away. Fraydich could catch a deer at full gallop; he could surely run down a fleeing woman so even on those nights that she overestimated how much of the man was in there, she remained unharmed. Sometimes even going so far as to scold him like she was training an unruly dog instead of pretending to be brave when facing down a beast that could kill her with one blow. On those nights, Fraydich would snap and snarl, prowling around her and sulking like a great, red-eyed shadow until he remembered who she was.

Meredith paused, leaning her arms on a fence that overlooked a pumpkin patch; this stretch of land belonged to the Perlhutch family, staples of the region. They’d been here for five generations. She looked at the field of large green leaves and slowly-swelling gourds, all of it caught under the harvest moon’s great light. There was a festival in town right now, as there was every year for the harvest moon. She’d put in an appearance earlier, but taken her leave shortly after the moon began to rise. It wasn’t that she objected to any of her neighbours – well, most of them – but she wanted to spend this evening with someone else, and she wouldn’t find him at any gathering. Not tonight.

Tonight, she would have to do something everyone in the village would have warned her against and take a stroll out beyond the town’s lights, under a full moon.

A shadow emerged from the distant trees. Meredith paused, looking at it, certain that it was staring back at her. After a moment, it began to lope towards her. Not the charge of a deadly predator, but the excited run of something else and despite several moments of uncertainty, Meredith relaxed as the creature came closer and she fully recognized its shape. Bounding through the pumpkin patch, Fraydrich vaulted the fence easily, circling around Meredith, red eyes glinting in excitement as he shifted from his two-legged stance to a four-legged crouch, pressing his nose into her and snuffling loudly.

“Yes,” she said with a grin as she reached over and scratched behind her werewolf’s ears. “I missed you too. I hope you ate already, because I could only take away enough turkey sandwiches for myself.” He looked back up at her as if he understood and perhaps he did, at least a little. There was more of the man in there than the beast these days. Maybe one day it would only be the man looking back out at her.

The other villagers said the nights were dangerous and no one should be out alone, but under this harvest moon Meredith knew that she had nothing to fear. Not with Fraydrich beside her and not as long as she remembered her father’s lessons. “Come on,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her along the road. “Everyone in town is at the festival. Let’s enjoy the night.”