#accepted!!!!

The moment he saw Yvad, saw his eyes, Ianto knew whose child he was. Knew who his mother’s father had been, because he was also Ianto’s grandfather. He remembered being a small child, sitting on his grandmother’s lap, batting at the necklace she held above him like a rattle. His twin brother, Iain, curled beside him, quiet as always.

“Now, listen, my little hearts.  This is a story like those I have told you many times. But this is not a story of the ancient times.  This is a story of how the Dread Wolf visited our clan and tore away it’s heart.”

“Twins, like you my Da’len, are very special. Very rare among the people. You have never been told this, but I was also a twin. As we grew, my sister and I, we dressed alike, talked alike, we seemed to live and breathe with one heart,” the boys giggled, for they did the same.

“Though, as we became young women, we did take different paths.  She became a storyteller.  Oh, my sister could almost do magic with her voice. She could make you laugh or cry, rage or despair, feel the passion of lovers and the bitter anger of rivals. All with her voice. She became the heart of our Clan.”

“I, as you know, became a hunter. I was told I was as swift as a halla, eyes as sharp as a hawk.  Nothing escaped me when I was tracking,” she sighed and shifted them in her lap.  

Ianto grew still and hugged his brother to him, sensing his grandmother’s distress. “There was a young hunter from another Clan came to our village to escort our Keeper’s new First. This hunter was unlike any man we had ever seen, with eyes violet, the colour of the pre-dawn. He was beautiful, and captured the hearts of so many of the young People. He was the only thing my sister and I ever fought about.”

“The young hunter seemed captivated by us. By our being twins. His long black hair and piercing eyes made us long for him. But we knew he could only court one of us. At first, he would spend a day listening to my sister’s stories, and another hunting with me in the forest.  We both fell in love with him, as if seduced by a spell.”

“By the time the Keeper pressed him to make his choice, I already carried your mother in my womb, for his words were seductive, and I loved him more than reason and decorum,” She sighed and rubbed her thumb over the crystals of the necklace.  “He made a choice to marry me.“

"My sister came at me that night and told me that I must decline. That I must let him marry her, for she carried his child already. I called her a traitor.  She and I began to fight. At the same time, a great storm broke over the camp. In the rain and thunder and lightning, we fought, and bloodied each other.”

“Finally, I snatched this necklace off her neck and told her she was no longer sister of mine. Angered, she left the camp that night, never to return. Shortly after that, after a night of fearsome dreams of the gods, another storm raged above the camp, and when I woke in the morning, your grandfather had disappeared.”

“And I believe, Da'len, that he was never one of the People.  He was the Dread Wolf, taken form, and come to spread malice and discontent, tearing apart the strongest bond; that of twins.”

Years and years later, when Iain was sent away by their Keeper to become the new First of a clan near Kirkwall, their grandmother took a spell and did not speak. Several years after that, when Ianto was going to be sent away to some kind of meeting of the Shems. His grandmother motioned him close.

She put her sister’s necklace in his hand, opened her mouth and spoke for the first time in so long.  “I feel the Dread Wolf in the air again. I do not know what will come after I have slipped away into the Realm of Spirits, but I feel the storm once more. Remember always, Fen’Harel cannot be trusted.”