Carlen feels the pressure in his mind and knows that it is time. He feels like he has just gotten to sleep, but the insistence is there and he forces his eyes awake and waits for them to make out the shapes in the darkness. After a moment, he can see by the embers of the campfire. The others all sleeping in their bedrolls, Avi, his familiar, is just a pair of glowing eyes in a tree, and under him, facing outwards from the camp, Whirn sits watch, as preternaturally still as always. //Damn, doesn't that man ever get a cramp, sitting like that for hours on end? Must be an elf thing.// He sends a mental feeling of //thanks// to Avi for waking him, and tries not to groan as he pulls himself up, trying not to disturb the others, but seeing that Hagrims hand twitches slightly on his axe anyway. Not that Hagrim has taken his hand off of that axe in the year and a half that he has known him, anyway...

He pulls on his boots and readies his wands at his belt before moving over to relieve the druid. Whirn doesn't even look up as Carlen moves up behind him, although he knows the elf couldn't possibly have not heard him coming a mile away, no matter how quiet he tried to be. He can see Whirn idly running his hand over his slender chest, almost sensuously, //Damn, need to find that boy a she-elf, he's getting pretty hard up// and then Whirn just looks at him with those large dead elven eyes, as if he in fact hadn't noticed Carlen tromping up behind him like a wild oxen. His hand is still tracing the tattoo on his chest, and now Carlen can see that his fingers are idly tracing the wings of the falcon emblazoned there. For a moment he again cannot believe that such a tattoo can be anything less than magic, it is so realistic, so perfect, like the image of a falcon flying out of Whirn's chest. But he reminds himself that they had over a year to put the image there, so of course it would be a work of art beyond anything he'd ever see on a human.

"My turn, you and your little friend," he points to the tattoo, grinning, "can go get some rest."

Whirns eyes remain lifeless as he gets up in a single fluid movement, as if he hadn't just been sitting unmoving for the last two hours, "Friend? No," he whispers on the way past, as his hand falls from his chest, "Enemy perhaps, hated sibling maybe, but never friend."

The venom that has crept into his voice shocks Carlen, and if he wasn't entirely awake, he certainly was now. He looks up to see Avi staring down at him with glowing owly eyes, with a slight pivot of his head, as if examining a bug. Wonders why he didn't get a toad that he could just throw in the bottom of his pack and forget about instead of this high-maintenance creature.

Looking back at Whirn, he can see that the elf is sitting in the posture that Merli used to sit in before she tranced out into whereever elves went when they slept. He used to like to watch Merli sleep, even after he'd gotten used to how beautiful she was and stopped thinking about her as just a woman. She would settle herself and then, like a torch flickering out, something would change. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, and the first time he had seen it, he had to go wake her, because he feared that she had died, or was having some sort of dangerous magical vision. Whirn usually did the same, but tonight he was just sitting there, eyes closed, but still there, not, whereever.

He knew Whirn was still awake. He could feel it, and he found himself whispering, low, so that the others wouldn't be woken, "Why do you hate the falcon? I thought he was supposed to be a totem or something?"

Whirn didn't turn, but Carlen could just here a whispered reply, "He did a great evil, and now everyone is waiting to see what great evil I will do."

Silence, but Carlen can feel that Whirn is still awake, he still has that tension, that presence that goes away when an elf sleeps. He shifts uncomfortably, unsure what to say, unsure what that meant, until the whisper resumes,

"When I was a child, the singers took me back to find my first life, the creature I was the very first time I opened my eyes to the light of this world. I dreamed the world beneath me, the wind battering at me like a solid thing and the impact of my body stricking my prey. The sun glinted red off of my wings."

"It was a noble seeking. The singers carried me on their shoulders, sure that I was linked to one of the sacred first beasts, Wings-of-Flame, who lived in the time before elves, when the world was new, and things like hawks with red wings where still fresh in this world."

"Many years passed, my training as a druid under the Keeper of Birds occupied much of my time. I dreamed often of the blazing wings, the heat of a mate beneath me, the warm flesh of the prey tearing in my beak. I was strong and beautiful and so proud of who I was."

"The final initiation ceremony occurs at adulthood, and singers join the initiate in his dreaming, they fly with him in this final celebration of his first life, before they mark his body with the symbol of that time, to seal him in remembrance of his true birth."

"They flew with me, sharing my pride as I flew over the lands that were mine, the mountain, the lake. But I felt the confusion as they flew with me, and I struggled to reconcile it with my own joy. I shared their confusion when we saw another hawk with red-tipped wings sharing the skies with me, and while I exulted in my own forbidden strength, they wept to see me drive him from the sky, trailing blood and feathers, sending him crashing to the earth. They had indeed seen Wings-of-Flame, seen his death, for I was not him, I was Wings-of-Blood, sired of him, but unwilling to share the skies, the first kinslayer in a new world of life."

"And now Wings-of-Blood, the First Kinslayer, is marked forever on my chest, he who turned my pride into shame, my hopes into ashes, and made my own parents look upon me with sorrow and pity."

Carlen starts as Whirns head snaps towards him and the cold eyes bore into him.

"You'll understand if I am somewhat bitter."

And he turns, and like a puppet with strings cut, Whirns body relaxes, and Carlen recognizes that he is asleep, his elven soul flying through clouds, reveling in its strength and grace, and hating himself for it.

Whirn, Male Wood Elf, Dru5/Inc4

SZ Medium Humanoid (5 ft., 7 inches tall); HD 8d8+16 ( hp); Init +2 (Dex), Spd 30 ft.; AC 16 (+2 Dex, +4 Hide Armor); Atk +6/+1 (); SA Wild Shape, Pastlife Forms; AL N; Saves Fort +10, Ref +4, Will +11; Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 12.

Skills: 48, Animal Empathy +6, Concentration +5, Knowledge: Nature +8, Handle Animal +4, Heal +8, Intuit Direction +5, Scry +2, Spellcraft +2, Wilderness Lore +7, Spot +1

Feats: Dreams of the Past (Spot), Craft Wondrous Item, Still Spell, Scribe Scroll

Possessions: +2 Hide Armor of Change (+2 enhancement bonus remains even in alternate forms), Wand of Cure Light Wounds, Bag of Tricks, Goodberry Pouch (1/day fills with 2d4 goodberries), Amulet of Greater Magic Fang +2 (only applies to natural weapon attacks, remains usable when Wild Shaped), Oakenblade +2 (permanant, as Div&Def p 220-221)

Spells per day: Druid 6/5/5/4/2/1

Forms: Hawk (+4 to attributes), Dire Badger, Polar Bear