But life is not a legend or a story. Reality is far more precious than a story.

Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty. Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.

The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror.

Not stories told by wolf or man to frighten children, of Wolfbane and of werewolves, of grasht and goblins and of silly vampires, fables to frighten cowards with the threat of evil and of sin. But the power that lives beyond those stories, and makes them strong indeed, that lives in nightmares and in sleep. That is ribbed into the very fabric of conscious being. The power of love and hate.

Now go away, or I'll get my friends the Bats to bite you.

I wish the battles of men could be solved in their heads.

That we can never know," answered the wolf angrily. "That's for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we're bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.