Even after willing her body to be still, Cymbelle’s thoughts race through her mind, fragmented and incoherent as the fragile new growth of spring leaf ripped from branch by early gales come a-reiving from the sea. The beating of her heart pounds in her chest, reverberating in her head, echoes of its hammering in her throat, pulsating behind her navel, inside her thighs where her blood surges through the veins.

Cymbelle thrusts the blanket away, feeling oppressed by its warmth and heaviness against her body. Too heavy for comfort; yet not enough weight to soothe her unrest.

Awakening fully, she twists to her side and stares out through the narrow window opening, catching a glimpse of the moon, bright and lucid, before it is caught behind a turbulent roil of clouds tearing across the sky on their way to a sabbat of storms.

The night air, bearing starlight and moonlight and all the scents of the darkness assuages her restlessness and captures her attention, a moth to light in darkness, letting her thoughts slowly settle out of chaos and the pounding of her heart slow to a steady throb.

This is not a night for slumbering dreams. Something calls. Something waits.

The three great hounds lift their heads and sniff the air, then look to Cymbelle, each raising a brow, pinioning her with the question in their sharp golden eyes; “are we going?” Cymbelle, returning their gaze, grimaces ruefully and rolls herself free of the bedding’s warm embrace.

Her hounds rise from their beds, stretching. Giant paws extend forward, chests to the ground, hindquarters and tails tall, then shifting their massive weight fluidly forward, they raise their heads and throats skyward, chests like bellows, held high, drinking in the night scents with deep draughts of air, back legs and haunches now stretched low and long; finally standing straight, snorting out the air from their lungs, having sifted through all of the messages carried in its scents and flavors.

Stretching is as contagious as a yawn. Cymbelle finds herself indulging in a voluptuous stretch that amplifies the drumming of her blood through her taut muscles before she releases her tensions along with the breath she hadn’t realized she held.

She pulls on the favorite breeches, worn soft by uncounted hours of hard work and many riverstone washings, an old chemise, shortened to graze the curve of her hips, shrugs into a leathern overjacket. She slides her feet into soft boots and ties the lacings around her calves, wrapping the laces thrice round before tying them off, thrusting her bone handled, rune etched blade through the sheath in the cuff. She swings her cloak about her shoulders and fastens the clasp.

“Now,” Cymbelle whispers to her hounds, “shall we go to see what is calling this night?”

And the hounds, being game, bound through the door and turn and gaze back at Cymbelle:
“Well,” their wise, feral, golden eyes query, “are you coming along or not?”

Closing the door behind her, Cymbelle follows her companions out into the shifting light
of the moon. Reading the scents of the night the air once again, the great beasts whuff in anticipation,
lower their heads, turn, and set out across the clearing at a trot. Cymbelle snatches up
her staff from its resting place against the wall and joins the hunt for what is calling . . . and waiting.

The four hunters skirt the woods, weaving between the sparse trees at the boundary between
woods and meadow, keeping pace with the clouds in their flight, the hounds taking care to
look back over their shoulders frequently to assure themselves that their mistress does not fall be-
hind. Every so often one hesitates long enough for Cymbelle to pass, and the good hound trails
her for a time, making sure nothing follows.

Fallow deer wake, startled, from their bedding place, but they are not the hunted this
night, and the hounds pass them by with only a glimpse, “Your fortune is good tonight; the hunt is not for
you this time . . . another time . . .” come the thoughts of the hounds, and the fallow deer settle back
uneasily, to sleep and to dream restlessly of another time.

Cymbelle and her hounds halt at the edge of the trees, where the sand begins to mingle
with the forest loam and the tide’s murmurs whisper to the sighs of the wood.

They watch. They wait.

They see a shape move out on the water; a trail of water arcs in the air over the sea and
the moonlight turns it into a skein of jewels for a brief moment.

Cymbelle forgets to breathe again.

The hounds sit at her feet, unmoving, blinking rarely. All three transfixed, watching the
shape grow larger, moving faster than the tide.

Cymbelle’s heart resumes its unruly hammering behind her breasts, her pulse quickens, a
rhythm of urgent life through her limbs. Her hounds, pressing their bodies close to her reassuringly,
croon softly, comforting, calming, counseling patience.

copyright 2011, Renee J. Epling