Clipped

Chapter 24.

​The weaving room was the warmest heart of the Great Hall, smelling of lanolin and the cedar chests that held the pack’s history in wool. Sunlight filtered through the high, narrow slits in the stone, illuminating the dust motes that danced like tiny spirits above the looms.

​Sora sat Rhiannon down at a small hand-loom. In front of them lay baskets of dyed wool: deep charcoal, bone-white, and a shimmering, unnatural blue that matched Rhiannon’s hair.

​"Every Solstice, we weave an Ancestor Ribbon," Sora explained, her fingers already moving with practiced grace. "We weave our year- the blood we shed, the paths we took, the ones we lost. Then, we give it to the fire. It’s how we tell the dead we haven't forgotten the shape of our lives."

​Rhiannon picked up a strand of charcoal wool. It felt rough, honest. "My shape is mostly shadows, Sora. How do you weave ten years of being nothing?"

"You start with the warp," Sora said gently, her silver charms chiming as she leaned over the frame. "The foundation. Even in the dark, you were still breathing."

​For a long time, the only sound was the rhythmic thrum-clack of the loom. As Rhiannon worked, the tactile repetition acted as a key, unlocking doors she usually kept double-bolted. She began to talk. She told Sora about the grey damp of the city, the way the light never quite reached the brothel, and the suffocating scent of cheap jasmine that had permeated the brothel for a decade.

​Sora listened with a wolf’s stillness, her amber eyes reflecting a deep, quiet empathy. She didn't flinch at the darkness; she simply tucked it into the silence of the room.

​"When... when 'it' was happening," Sora began, her voice hesitant, a rare flicker of uncertainty crossing her face. "Did it ever... feel good? Even for a second?"

​She looked up, her expression one of raw, almost childlike curiosity. As a wolf of the Nightshade pack, Sora had only ever known the fierce, consensual heat of her people- a world where desire was a shared hunt. The idea of being forced was a concept she struggled to map onto a physical body.

​Rhiannon didn't take offense. She saw the question for what it was: a friend trying to understand a world that shouldn't exist. She looked down at the charcoal thread in her hand, her eyes distant.

​"No," Rhiannon said, her voice flat and honest. "There is a difference between a body reacting and a soul participating. For me, the two were severed a long time ago. They had to keep a lot of oil around for me alone."

​The bluntness of the statement hung in the air. Rhiannon saw the way Sora’s jaw tightened, a flash of protective wolfishness sparking in her eyes.

​"Because the body refuses to welcome what the spirit rejects," Sora whispered, her fingers pausing on her loom.

​"Exactly," Rhiannon replied. "It was a mechanical process. A transaction of skin. My magic would go quiet, the static would get loud, and I would just... wait for the weight to leave. To feel anything else would have required me to be there, and I had learned to go somewhere else."

​She picked up a strand of the shimmering blue wool and began to weave it into the charcoal. It looked like a vein of lightning striking through a storm.

​"That’s why I don't think about the future," Rhiannon continued, her voice gaining a tiny bit of strength. "I don't know how to bridge that gap again. I don't know how to let a man near me without the oil, without the static, without the waiting. To a wolf, intimacy is a song. To me, it’s just a noise I’ve learned to tune out."

​Sora reached over, not to touch Rhiannon’s hand, but to adjust the tension on her loom, a subtle gesture of support. "Maybe you aren't a broken song, Rhiannon. Maybe you’re just in a long measure of silence. Even the mountain goes quiet before the spring."

​Rhiannon looked at her ribbon. It was jagged and dark, but the blue thread was persistent. It didn't break; it wound through the charcoal, stubborn and bright. She realized then that her thread wasn't frayed because it was weak; it was frayed because it had been pulled through the thorns and had refused to snap.

​"You're a strong weaver," Sora said, nodding toward the loom. "You didn't hide the ugly parts. You gave them a place in the pattern."

​"I have to," Rhiannon said, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "If I don't weave the shadows, the light won't have anything to hold onto."

​They worked until the sun dipped low, the ribbons growing longer as the room turned to gold. For the first time, Rhiannon felt the weight of her past shifting. It wasn't gone- it would never be gone, but as she tied the final knot on her Ancestor Ribbon, it felt less like a chain and more like a story she was finally ready to tell the fire.