Annalisa Story/PART 2: How I met your Mother.

The moon rose high above the trees, full to its brim with silver light that illumed the fog a in a spidery lacework to shroud the maple and spruce predominating the Arkansas forests outside of Hot Springs. There were still faint veins of primrose bleeding into the azure night, just visible between the treetops. It had not been quite sundown when Erik Ekrut, Rite named Shreds-the-Wyrm-Root, warrior born of the Get of Fenris had lost consciousness. The air was warm, and it thrummed with the chorus of hundreds of summer cicadas. He had lost his war-form in his unconsciousness and dumbly puzzled at how he could feel the prickle of bark and pine needles against his skin when his arm was hanging limp at his side in a compound fracture that flooded his senses with familiar pain. Blearily he looked around himself and realized he was lying in a pool of blood that was not even his own.

The carnage around him was horrific.

Certainly he and his pack had taken their toll on the enemy, the twisted forms of no less than six Black Spiral Dancers lay in ruinous states nearby. They had been shown their entrails before the night was through. However, the army of banes at their beck and call had been an overwhelming combination coupled with the Spirals' surprise attack. What had once been a sacred place had become a pile of Wyrmspawn carcasses that might just as easily poison the ground as they would have when alive.

Erik looked around, and a great despair filled him. He wanted to end himself as he saw that none of his pack had lived save for he. Gerder Runs-Upon-Three, the warrior bard of his pack whom had never lagged behind despite losing a leg to a great wyrmbeast when she was only a cub just past her firsting, had been the first to die. Her prone human form showed that she had exacted a price upon her killer. A torn throat still lay within her bloody lips. Tor Hammer Tongue, Roger Cuts the Path, Hansel Laughing Maw, all of them had died fighting. Erik's pack, his family, they were gone. He should have been happy for them to have died fulfilling their duty. They died with claws out, swords in hand, leaping down the throat of the Wyrm to throttle it... but he felt only the emptiness of their loss.

Was he truly Get at all? He had been their leader.

Dragging himself to his feet, Erik stumbled back against a half-splintered tree, he could not even feel his rage anymore. Something black was in him, something that made him want to simply close his eyes and meet the darkness. He walked over and picked up Gerder's klaive, pointing it at his own heart.

A stick snapped nearby, snatching his attention as warrior instincts made him tear away from the self-ruination. He spun with the silver blade in one hand...

And standing before him was a woman whose purity he had never seen the like of. It was not that she was so terribly remarkable in beauty. She was pretty enough, with high Native American cheekbones on a Caucasian complexion and wavy honey blond hair to frame her face but her blind eyes might have been off-putting if not for her sense of both purity and strength.

It was one of the Kinfolk who belonged to the little Child of Gaia Caern, she had ventured out despite the danger and Erik found himself both frustrated and admiring of her strength of will.

"I did not sense any further battle and I came to tend the wounded... is everyone alright?" asked the young woman vaguely in his direction, trying to pinpoint him by the sounds of his movement.

"They are dead," said Erik as he dropped the klaive, simply surrendering to the weariness, exhaustion, pain and grief "They are all dead. The enemy. My pack. All of them save me... " The young woman caught Erik , holding his battered form to her bosom with a strength that she did not look to posses.

Many tales were sung of the exploits of Erik's pack after that night. They were tales of how a Get of Fenris Pack whom had only just settled in with the tiny Sept had died to all but the last Garou defending the Caern heart when the Children of Gaia Elders had been lured away to rescue their cubs. It had been a tiny Sept back then, all but abandoned by the original Fianna who had named it the Sept of the Drunken Hick Kickers.

The tales of Erik's pack were sung anew nearly a year later when a blind Child of Gaia kinfolk named Marissa gave birth to his twin daughters on a night when the waning crescent moon had just given way to absolute darkness, and to the surprise of all save Erik who had thanked Gaia for his mate whom had pulled him from the depths of harano that night, the Kin Fetch for the first of his twins not only shone a true divination but was not for his own tribe; it was for the bloodline of her mother, The Children of Gaia.

Erik never married Marrisa, the daughters never bore the Ekrut name, but he thanked Gaia each day for his mate and his twins.