Nathaniel Mason

RP journal for an original werewolf character played by calliope_love. For questions and comments, ping me here! Comments are screened.

He waited until spring to leave the city.

His roaming about the land over the winter months had revealed that a werewolf could go for miles without running into another of his own kind -- one of the ones he accidentally sired moves freely about the area, unmolested, and though Nathaniel has gone far enough toward the distant mountains to hear howling, he's never once been confronted. The white wolf and his black little cub leave him be. He's more alone here than he has been since the time before the attack, before the curse, and realizing that had nearly made him break down and weep for the first time in decades.

At last, after years upon years of incessant moving, avoiding other wolves and their awful politics, terrified that the humans he meets will discover what he is, here in Nusquamton, Nathaniel Mason is able to set down some roots. It's all he's truly wanted for as long as he can remember now. And so he waited until spring and he left the city and he used his old, nearly-forgotten skills in carpentry to build himself a little cottage far, far out into the forest. It's on the opposite side of the city from the farm where his lupine accidents live. The little money he'd saved up since his arrival went towards furnishings, pots and pans and curtains and things, and he set up a garden and traps for the rabbits and there's a lake nearby with plenty of fish, and he hasn't been back to the city since.

Why should he? He isn't sure he's ever been this calm in his whole life. He spends his days working around his little house, worrying only about practical things like canning enough for the winter and mending the holes in his nets, and the fox brings him news from the town. Nathaniel is a jumble of emotion at the best of times, but as far as he can tell, this quiet new life is the closest he will ever come to being happy.




Over the summer, the fox tells him of kidnappings. People disappear and reemerge, says Leicon, smelling of chemicals and speaking of them, the "Doctor" and his horrifying assistant. The white wolf is one of the ones who disappears. They keep him the longest, and there's a fear that he's been killed. No doubt he'd have tried to fight his way out, Nathaniel thinks. Why wouldn't he? But Nathaniel says nothing much in reply. He does nothing, thinking of the plight of this man he's never met, whose life he has irrevocably changed. He does nothing when he stumbles across a trampled, bloody stretch of field where some sort of fight had taken place, the scent of wolf and chemical heavy on crushed blades of grass. He does nothing when the fox informs him that the white wolf has been found at last, but the city is still on the hunt.

It's nothing to do with him, really, he figures. Then the ghost appears in the field.

He thinks she's a live wolf at first, and with despair, he wonders if he'll have to move again after all. But she carries no scent with her. She hovers barely there within his sight one night, staring at him from afar, and Nathaniel realizes he can see the trees behind her through her coat. When she leaves, she turns to go and disappears completely, vanishing like mist blown away. It isn't the first time she appears. Over the next week or two, she grows stronger and stronger, flashing silver beneath moonlight and trotting alongside him when he ventures close enough. It makes the werewolf increasingly nervous, this long bout of time she spends doing nothing but existing.

But she never seems to leave that field -- the same one where the fight took place. Nathaniel wonders if she's bound to the area, and despite himself, he visits her often, wondering who she is and why she's there. Finally, one night, she's a woman, and she's found a voice.

"I can tell you," she says.

And then she does, and Nathaniel doesn't want to hear it, really. But once he knows, there's nothing for it. There is no more neutrality to be had. Keeping to himself is just as effective as hurting the others outright, if he does nothing with this knowledge. And so, as summer is fading into fall, Nathaniel and his heavy heart make their way to the Baskerville Farm. He'll meet his two children at last, and he'll tell the duke what he's learned.

In the field, the ghost lingers, and she waits.