Bab 752: FIRST PEACE, WHAT NEXT?
27 FEBRUARY, SATURDAY, LATE LUNCH
I poked around in the living room investigating my mate's disappearing act for a bit. It was all very mysterious how two grown alpha wolves could disappear soundlessly within a minute. It didn't look like they had used any of the glass doors out to the porch, and I was standing just at the only other doorway. I caught myself looking under the side table before realizing how it would be impossible to fit even one of the men under it. The only other place might be behind the curtains but that would be ridiculous, why would a Young Alpha Lorent, or the Great Teacher Gunter be hiding in my living room?
I felt my stomach complain because I was running on empty. Even though I had eaten pizza last night in ghost form, my human form was starved! At any rate, pizza was dinner. I had missed breakfast and lunch. It was a miracle I hadn't starved to death!
Okay, I exaggerated, but I was really hungry. I got myself to the kitchen quite by my lucky sense of direction and opened the fridge door. If I were a wolf born in ancient times, my lucky sense of direction would have taken me into the woods to hunt, but I guess our wolves had evolved with the times, and at least my wolf was wired to hunt in the fridge/pantry, packhouse kitchen, or else I suppose I'd head out to the nearest burger joint.
Today's hunt was bountiful indeed! Our fridge was stocked with red cans of coke - there were at least 10 cans! Coke! In my own home! I wondered if Mum knew? It all began when I started elementary school and my Mum found out that I had been buying coke from the drink dispenser in the school cafeteria every single day.
"Its my money." I argued when she tried to reason with me, "You said I could do whatever I wanted with my allowance!"
I won that argument, but my victory was short lived. Since Mum realized she couldn't control what I ate and drank with my pocket money, she decided to straighten out our pantry to "balance" my diet. Goodbye coke and every other sugared drink known to mankind. We had water, whole milk, and sometimes honey or juice. The adults had tea and coffee.
And the green stuff at the table doubled. I guess Mum must have figured that I didn't eat anything remotely vegetable while at school too.
But that was okay, I spent my pocket money on coke and small chocolate bars, so I survived. When I went to middle school, my parents were forced to increase my allowance, and I found a corner store that sold doughnuts, buy 3 get one free. I'd save up throughout the week, and on Fridays, buy three and get a free one for Savy.
And of course, I still drank coke everyday. A coke a day... well, it didn't seem to do anything really. I just really liked it. And just like my milk, I liked my coke "whole". None of that diet stuff.
But it wasn't just the coke. For some reason, the population of leftover pizza, once thought to be extinct in our home, was now at overcrowding levels. Ki had resorted to stacking the slices on top of each other in clear tupperware. Naturally, I had to do my part to cull the herd. I took out one of the tupperwares - it was large enough for two slices to sit fitted next to each other and then stacked five slices high. That was a total of 10 slices.
It was cold pizza though. I noticed the lid was red. Oh right, Sabre had said red containers needed warming.
I probably should have taken a plate out and heated it a slice or two at a time, but I put the whole container into the microwave. This was a mistake. The cheese melted and stuck the stacked slices together. I ended up having two large servings of pizza cake, which I guess was what I'd call a blessing in disguise. Hahaha. I was lucky like that I guess.
I sat at on the first barstool to enjoy my meal, but the house was so still and hollow. I guess everyone was still busy after the Ceremony of the Departed, but I couldn't help buy feel a little sorry for myself. I finally stopped being a ghost, and I was still all alone!
Something in my pocket vibrated.
Oh! My phone! I had forgotten I had it. I wanted to take videos of my betas' reaction at the sight of their beloved vehicles, but I forgot I had it. Oh well, I really should get used to having a phone. I mean, weren't teenagers supposed to be glued to these things? At least that was what the adults said.
I had always assumed I'd be the cool and savvy type of teen who'd be flicking through my social media or playing games, or something you know? I ended up with not just a phone, but a kindle and then a surface pro too. All I did was read reports on them though. Wow, I was such a nerd.
Okay! I supposed this would be the perfect time to live the plugged in teenage dream I had only heard of when the adults complained about their teenagers to my Luna Mum. I picked up my phone and unlocked it feeling cool and all that! Yes! Let's see, should I play a game or two? Or maybe check out my social media. Oh! Maybe I should post something! Hmmm... I opened up my social media app. What should I post?
The moment my social media channel popped open, I was greeted by blue faced wolves. OMG. That sort of surprised me. Was it weird that it was kinda my fault they looked like that, but it was like my prank was flipped around and suddenly it had become the official way to "die with the departed."
And it was the trending selfie - of my wolves, with friends and family, blue faced, somewhat puffy eyed, smiling at the camera with captions like, "You'll always be my heroes!" and "Departed but never forgotten." "#runwithoutregrets"
A number of photos were taken at the photo booth set up outside the Memorial Hall. "#blessed." Why? Because nobody in your family died?
Someone had the caption "YOLO". I guess that worked too.
Maybe we all left that place with different takeaways.
Someone posted a short video of BETA GERALD VS SEVEN. It was a shaky shot of Seven, I mean, Stephan being thrown by the admin Beta followed by a long line of comments.
Even the Muunies got in on the action, appearing with blue faces on their channel feeds. Suddenly, loads of wolves (and humans too) around the continent were all coloring their faces blue in support of our pack.
Someone else posted a quote against a photo of the old stone memorial hall building and the snowy sky. It was reposted many times so I stopped scrolling to read it even though it had way too many words.
"Sometimes we have to let go of the past to move forwards. Sometimes we have to remember it to move forwards. But the world is changing everyday and what it is today isn't what it was yesterday. And what it will be tomorrow wouldn't be what it is today. We need to keep running without regrets. - Alpha Princess"
Oh. But I wasn't even at the ceremony!
The whole rest of the world was though. The entire ceremony was streamed live and the hardworking reporters from all the major press and media channels had churned out the news in every kind of perspective conceivable. There were the traditional and serious headlines stating "The Green Packlands marks a New Era of Peace with a Ceremony of the Departed" to really weird ones with blown up photos of blue faced wolves, "Its a Blue Day in the Green Packlands." Naturally, this headline was by our very own LyNCh. They really loved this kind of one liners.
There was this opinion piece the FAO reposted. Trust the FAO channel to give a bit more formality and depth into the entire event. This article was written by a Lycan Expert, some leading professor from Black Forest University. I guess it wasn't just the regular reporters that was hard at work. It felt like EVERYONE WAS WATCHING THIS.
Anyway, here's the online op-ed, it's kind of long, but I'm attaching it here because it was the first article I've read about Night Leaf that I really, really liked:
FIRST PEACE, WHAT NEXT?
For the first time in history, the Night Leaf Pack in the Green Packlands had allowed the public eye into their traditional sending off ceremony for what they expect to be the last warriors to die in war. After more than a decade of border conflicts with the rogues by the Warlock Lands, the Green Packlands finally announced in a press release "a new era of peace."
For the first time we, as outsiders step foot into the deep recesses of their forests, and what we see there confounds us.
What happened to the barbaric backwood pack we were expecting to see when cameras brought us into Night Leaf?
Led by Alpha Kingsley from the Night Forest Pack of the Blue Packlands shortly after the dust of the Great War settled, the band of rag tag young wolves who gathered under his leadership had suddenly emerged in the most shocking way - and we aren't even talking about their shockingly blue stained faces - a Night Leaf deeply honored tradition which expressed the pack's devotion and grief for their departed warriors.
Now we suddenly understand why the dark blue was chosen for their new warrior uniforms earlier this year. It wasn't just a new fashion statement, or an upgrade to incorporate new material for increased comfort and durability. It had a far deeper significance - a reminder of those who had passed before them, and the mantle which they bore as the warriors who were still alive.
And it wasn't just their new uniforms which had somehow interwoven their short but profound relationship with the past into the modern styling and technological advancement of today's new world, everything else in the relatively young pack was permeated with a sense of history, of purpose, and of heart.
Take their ceremonial hall for example. The stone building was not more than 15 years old, but it was modeled after the ceremonial hall in Night Forest which is one of our 14 Lycan heritage buildings under our High Council's Preservation Site Listing, and their custom carried on from since the first black wolves in the mountains. However, this ceremonial hall has a marked difference - not only was it centrally heated, it was built to seat a thousand wolves, double the capacity of the original hall in Night Forest. Alpha Kingsley had said when the ceremony hall was first built, "As warriors, we fight to ensure the survival of our pack. And those who had departed did not die in vain, for one day, this hall will be filled with the living who have survived on their sacrifice."
For the longest time, we in the other packlands had regarded Alpha Kingsley's opinions as rather radical, so this was just one of those things he would do. But today, it happened just as he predicted. All one thousand seats were filled, but what was most striking was not the fact that the halls were filled, but who they were filled with. It was not just Night Leaf and Morning Light wolves, but wolves from their neighboring packs, as well as Alphas and dignitaries from almost every top tier pack in our continent, and with them, naturally a small army of media representatives.
Suddenly, the Night Leaf Pack was important enough for the likes of Alpha Gunter Donovan of the Snow Moon Kingdom and Alpha Patrick George of Silver Mountain Pack. It might be interesting to note that both packs had publicly announced unexpectedly strong alliances with Night Leaf in recent weeks.
Their presence and those of the other Alphas and dignitaries, might signal more than a obligatory attendance though. Dare I suggest, it was more than a subtle nod towards Night Leaf's sudden aggressive stance on their side of the border conflict - for the first time their warriors had crossed their territorial boundaries in a concerted retaliation to an attack on Friday morning. In this way, the decade long war was finally ended over the weekend.
The activities in our continent's far-off backyard had been popping up in the news lately. It started with a huge fire - a rogue attack on their alpha house, and then the appearance of what seemed to be the likeness of the goddess herself, but was Alpha Kingsley's eldest daughter and heir, the Alpha Princess, Samantha Kingsley Lorent. Yes, Lorent. Which was the next media whirlwind - Night Leaf's Alpha Princess is now engaged to the Lorent Pack's Young Alpha James Lorent III, signaling the merger of the largest two major packs in the Green Packlands - and it seems that Morning Light - or whatever was left of it after their Alpha's untimely passing at the start of their border conflict, would also play a crucial part in the management of this merger.
"The world is changing everyday." These were Alpha Kingsley's famous catch phrase in one of the few rare interviews regarding the emergence of Gate City, which was a joint venture between the three packs and the dozen or so minor packs tucked quietly in the forest.
He wasn't joking.
In the past, while the Lorents had made their mark in the medical field and their preservation of Lycan tradition and arts. Night Leaf had remained largely in their shadows. To say that their sudden rise into the spotlight was unexpected would the the understatement of the year. Suddenly everything is changing.
Now Night Leaf has submitted papers for the claim of the Warlock lands. If their claim is approved, the Green Packlands territories would be expanded all the way to the Colored Mountains. Whether the high council would pass this, and under what terms and conditions the claim would be passed, would be another topic for another time.
Suddenly, the face of our map is changing, and the rest of us are left watching with our mouths hanging open the way we watched the Ceremony of the Departed this morning.
The ceremony was beautiful, poetic even in poignant imagery, lined with candles and white roses, starring blue faced wolves, and a vortex of fire that I can only imagine the heat of from behind my TV screen.
Meanwhile, my mind struggled at each moment to wrap itself around its significance. What just happened? They won the war - the estimated rogue count was in the hundreds, and they were all dead. Meanwhile, Night Leaf and Morning Light sends off eight warriors. Eight. That was their death count. It was an 800:8 ratio.
Nothing was making sense. Night Leaf's last recorded population was slightly less than 500 wolves, including men, women, and children. Morning Light had around 300, mostly women, elderly, and children. Yet they had five warrior captains. If we applied a hundred warriors to each captain, we were looking at minimally 500 warriors. The math just didn't add up.
Nothing we watched on TV this morning added up - not logically anyway. My mate who was nursing our pup next to me broke down in tears halfway through the ceremony. We didn't even know anyone from the Green Packlands! I tried to talk her out of her tears, but I had to admit, it wasn't just my mate who was affected by the outpouring of grief. As the camera panned back to the various section of audience, I realized there wasn't a dry eye in hall.
The aftermath was just as emotional and irrational.
Almost immediately after the ceremony closure, the floodgates at the news channels opened and news broke out on every front.
Page Six announces the Young Prince of Snow Moon Kingdom's engagement with Alpha Kingsley's second daughter.
On social media, the whole world is trying on the blue look.
And I'm sure you've seen the news footage of two lost pups who found their way into the media booth. Two of Night Leaf's infamous "blue demon warriors" had come up at the commotion, and were caught on camera comforting the frightened pups with surprising gentleness and a bag of candy. (Was that standard issue among blue demons?)
My mate started tearing up again when she watched this. By now, I had given up reasoning with her tears. I just passed her the tissue so she could re-watch the same footage multiple times because "it was so cute!"
In more serious news (the kind I usually read and write for work), The Economics Journal Online reported on the Green Packland's merger and its entry into the tourism industry now that their land is at peace. Inter-packlands News (IPN) covered the different alliances the Lorent and Night Leaf had established in recent months. Somewhere, a military expert points out that the combined Green Packlands military force could very well rival Black Forest's Army. And LNC had an impromptu discussion point on boundary lines and whether Night Leaf and Morning Light had breached High Council rules by crossing it in pursuit of their attackers.
But no one had asked aloud just yet, although I'm sure it was on the forefront of all our minds, at least among those in my field of expertise - Could we be looking at a second super-powered "Black Packlands"?
Remembering the 30 year long civil war to merge the Black Packlands under the Black Forest Pack, this new Green Packlands seemed to be birthed relatively calmly. Back then the Black Packland's merger was the event that changed our map and course of history forever. It seems undeniable that the Green Packlands is pushing the papers to do the same.
The young beta speaking on behalf of the Alpha Princess - she is currently recovering from her war mission - which struck me as unthinkable at first, who sent a young teenage girl out for war? But here in the Green Packlands, I suspect nothing is as we would expect.
Their youths do not shy from stepping up, not if the Young Beta Harvey was any indication. Although, he is not yet even out of high school, the young beta is a seasoned warrior and as if having done so all his life, he stepped up, and stood in front of a thousand wolves and the live stream to the rest of the world, and spoke calmly and simply.
He had quoted the Alpha Princess in his speech. Words beyond their ages.
"Sometimes we have to let go of the past to move forwards. Sometimes we have to remember it to move forwards. But the world is changing everyday and what it is today isn't what it was yesterday. And what it will be tomorrow wouldn't be what it is today. We need to keep running without regrets."
And again, there it was - this repeated theme of the past and how it linked us to the future.
How was it that Night Leaf seemed to have suddenly taken one giant leap forward - ahead of the rest of us? When did that happen? Could it be that while the rest of us rested from the Great War, in the Green Packlands, they were still fighting - and moving forwards, changing everyday, transforming the history they've inherited into something that would possibly become the most enviable future in the continent?
My mate dabbed her eyes with tissue, "Wouldn't it be nice if our pups could grow up in a world where warriors were all like that?"
"Like what?" I asked nonplussed.
"Like I don't know. They're blue demons at war, but they still kneel down in front of a crying pup and give candy." She says.
Yeah. I didn't understand that either.
Today, we were given special access into the depths of the Green Packlands to watch from the comforts of our home, what played out not just as an historic moment for their packlands as they "enter their era of peace", but what I believe would be the turning point of Night Leaf in Lycan history.
Like the Hymn of the Departed performed at the opening of the ceremony, the morning's event was heart-rending, beautiful, and intense with stirring emotions for all the things our wolves cannot deny - Loyalty, Devotion, Courage, Endurance, and Strength. Suddenly, Night Leaf was no longer the destructive wild blue demon barbarian pack which ran with a death god on call. They were the victim that overcame with much sacrifice, the war hero that rose up from the backwaters, the warriors who comforted lost pups, the relatable everyday wolf next door you'd like to have a drink with.
Suddenly they were the underdog that we were rooting for.
More than their turnaround victory in their border conflict. More than their drastic public image edit. More than their surprise update on their financial, economic, and military might. What caught me completely off guard when I watched the proceedings was the way these wolves were so real - in their grief, in their pride, in their hope.
Watching the grief-stricken wolves step out of the Memorial Hall and then participating in the fund raising event by the Warrior Welfare Committee parked just outside, I was completely floored. I couldn't help but feel that after all that's said and done, that could have been my family too.
Arguably, one might give credit to the team steering Night Leaf's PR campaign. They've been building up quite the following on social media in recent times, and this event was the opportunity they took to completely re-position Night Leaf in the eyes of popular opinion.
Even though I know this, I cannot help but feel my mate was right. This world might be a better place if more warriors were like Night Leaf blue demons. I cannot believe I just wrote that. I cannot believe my editor would print it at any rate. (Editor's note: Me neither.)
Usually, I write to explain Lycan issues, and I would like to think I am quite clear about what was going on and the significance of what unfolded. Today, I watched Night Leaf send off their departed warriors and ended up writing this op-ed piece because I had no idea how to explain what just happened.
My mate had an explanation though, she told me, "We saw them for the first time, and we were moved. You wouldn't understand. It's a heart thing."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone