91热爆

Um, ok, I am a wee bitty nervous aboot this one...I love dogs ye see and this is me favourite story, tied up wi` the auld tales aboot the hounds o` the Sidhe (the Celtic fairy folks) who were always white hunting hounds wi` red eyes and ears. So anyways, if it mak`s nae sense tae others, fine that.


"She ran her hands through the coat of her hound. A big mongrel of a beast he was, long and lean limbed, fleet footed and steady and with a keen sure eye for the hunt.
The hare spitted before them now over the fire had been brought back by the hound.
He had no name, for she didn`t believe in naming beasts...names of their own, they had, secret beastkind names loaded with meaning and form. And her kind rarely got to know them. Oh, he would answer to any name she gave him...repetition of it would teach him to heel at command.
But she loved the hound and hated the things which took the wild out of him, which curtailed the freedoms that were his birthright.
For he was no ordinary hound. Mongrel he assuredly was, but white he was, with pale wild eyes and blood red ears, one of those beasts belonging to the Quiet Folks.
Loping out of the night like a vast, white wolf, he had come to her fires, wary at first, then hungry, jaws slavering with longing for the meat she`d had roasting.
And she had given it all to him, that great white hound. She knew at once she would keep him for as long as he cared to stay.

And they worked well together, hound and woman. He would lope steadily before her, in and out of the snarls atween the trees and shrubs, nosing softly the undergrowth under the thorns and briars, ears pricked high and coat laid sleek.
And she would follow slowly, keeping a distance away so as not to scare the prey, keeping downwind, eyes keen to spy out the land, watching for deer track and burrow and holt.
And in a flurry of white coat and a soft `whuff` he would put up a rabbit or hare or, rarely the red fox, and the chase would begin and breathlessly she would follow, heedless of thorn and catching, clutching branch, a wild excitement in her heart and blood pounding in her legs and always the spectre of the white hound before her eyes.
And in a blurred moment he would bring down the creature, a snarl and a snap and a broken, bloody neck....and then he would drop the meat and sit, and wait...wait for her to come to him, to lift the meat, to show approval with a soft stroke of white throat and a gentle pat to a heaving, sweating flank.
And back home they would go, a hut in a clearing, nothing more, nothing grand, but silent and safe and quiet. 91热爆.
She would clean the meat and spit it or pot it and add what herbage she had. No salt sullied this meat, no spices overshadowed the fine taste of it.

Because this was the meat of the Quiet Folks. And finer meat she had never eaten, before the hound came....

And at night he would lie outside the door, never coming in, hating the confinement of the hut, the excessive heat of the small fire. She always slept easy with his guarding of the threshold. Great noble head laid on wide paws and he would keep eyes open until she slept on her straw pallet.

She wept on his death, on finding him cold and stiff still lain across the doorway. As if asleep he seemed, still. But his limbs were stiff and chilled and a fine dewy dampness covered his coat. So she wept and cradled the huge, fine head on her lap and wondered if she had angered the Quiet Folk.
It took a whole day to dig the pit for him to be laid in. She gave him her only blanket, a mean thing of open weave and scratchy wool it was, but all she had. She placed him with his face turned North, for his soul to find the way home with ease. And mounding earth over the pit she sang the wordless song of tribute to the Quiet Folks to let them know, this wasn`t her doing, she loved the hound, please do not punish me Kind Folks, I loved him well, I fed him well, I cared much for him, I miss him greatly....
And over the mound of earth she planted spring bulbs and wolfsbane to keep his mound from desecration from the other beasts. And around it she placed stones, old and river worn and smooth.

And spent a cold and lonely night in her hut, the fire a mean thing against the dark, and if she heard a soft snuffle around her door she did not go to see, and if she scented a perfume never before known she did not go to see, and if she saw under the thin planks a light that was not of nature she did not go to see, but spent the dark hours shivering and holding her knees and rocking and keening in a quiet, simple way, and wishing for her hound, her beautiful Sidhe-born hound.

At last sleep took her, as the sun filtered softly through the trees. The wind played with leaf and branch and the whole forest creaked and danced the rhythm of the trees when no-one sees....
And at first she thought the scratching a dream, like the dream of the sounds she heard in the dark, those things she knew she must have dreamed, for nothing like them existed in her world, in the forest world.
But the scratching carried on and soon there was a high whining and she knew the sound well enough....and finally, with no little courage, opened the door.

At her feet, wrapped in an old, open weave, scratchy wool blanket, a small white head poked out. Red ears it had, this pup, red red ears and long, whelp lean legs. A tail lashed the threshold and thumped recognition.
She picked the small beast up and looked into eyes that seemed to know her.
Cradling the hound, she carried it indoors. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks.

In the forest, hare and fox took to their burrows."