Feiyan had overseen the idyllic glade for so long she couldn't remember her last name. She only remembered the first because it'd been on a collar locked around her neck from a young age. She'd glimpse it, now and then, when she'd trot down the ivory steps that led to a temple below the earth. Her den. The tomb of the Goddess. Feiyan loved the peace down there, almost as much as she hated her Goddess. But she was cursed, and for two thousand years the most she could bring herself to rebel was a little tinkle on her Goddess' (now thoroughly yellowed) silk shoes.

Two thousand years of solitude brings about a certain sense of routine. Two thousand years of seasons blooming and waning, two thousand years spent on the periphery of humanity, watching cities build and wane and rust in the long-suffering tide of time.

And through that time, Fei never aged and her Mistresses' body never rotted. Smelled better than any body Fei had witness, human or animal. After two thousand years, she fancied herself a bit of a bone collector. Hers was a bone garden, constantly added to, constantly overgrown as life carried on above the worms in the soil.

The worms never came for the Goddess. She was dead, though she looked merely asleep. There had been some changes to her as she rested. The petals the men had lain around her had shriveled back to their elements, barely stains on the white marble. Her clothes had grown old beneath a cloak of feathers and her once expressive cheeks were colored the pallor of dust.

The Goddess was dead.

Fei had been dead once.

It was a brief affair, as far as deaths went. The men had pumped her full of meat and wine and made her sniff strange powder. Beneath the night stars they anointed her head with oils and stripped her naked and the warriors had given her their seed to birth a legion of guardians in the next life. They made her kiss the dead woman's feet, and then the jagged edge of stone bit into her neck and her life, and the Goddess', were forever bound.

Fei did not remember what happened between the time she collapsed into the living flowers and the time she clawed her way free of the dead ones around the Goddess. She was confused, and staggering, and every time she tried to stand she found she was on all fours. A collar was around her throat, leading to a rope knotted around an iron rung beside the Goddess' hand.

She chewed through it, and after some time and much pain pawing at her throat, she managed to slip that collar. Two thousand years later, all that remained of the collar was a scrap of gleaming metal, nosed into her owner's hands for safe keeping. 

It'd taken several years and the luck of erosion before she'd managed to dig out from the temple beneath the forest floor and emerge underneath the dappled sun. By then she'd been filled with an undying hatred for the Goddess, and an undying love for her, too.

Guardian curses were not often the kindest bestowed.

But the warriors of the past had failed to provide her with undying pups. That, perhaps, was a blessing greater than immortality or the ability to change and speak all the languages of man, so that they could heed her warnings, when she chose to give them.

Since that first breakthrough, Feiyan slept in the quiet near the entrance, beneath trees that grew and died and forced her to move to budding replacements. She would not venture down the steps, except when the quiet pool of anxiety had flooded her senses and she felt compelled to check the peace. The forest was hers to roam, never a paw further unless the Goddess' belongings, or her body, were disturbed.

To occupy her time she would explore, and learn, and hunt. And when new men of new creeds and new curious clothes came, she would kill them as she killed the snakes that slithered down into the cool depths to escape the heat of the summer. There was no mercy, there was no spite unless she was first bitten. It was a necessary kill.

The day the newest man came, Feiyan had been hunting a civet. The civet, unaware of her but quite aware of him, scuttled higher up the tree. Fei crouched in the nearest brush. This man was not very close to her yet, but he was headed in the direction of the Goddess. With a growl and a bit of a lippy snarl, she crept after him, crept past the twitching noses of hares and colorful birds, her belly tickled by sun-warmed flowers. She watched, with flattened ears and a lashing tail, waiting for him to take that last step toward the Goddess, the one that would send her leaping at him.

Occasionally, she'd lift her snout as the wind changed and catch a whiff him.

This man carry the natural odors of the villagers, the ones who knew of the hound in the woods, the ones who sometimes left her offerings of bone and fly-stricken meat. This man smelled of spice and chemicals.

He smelled, to put it quite simply, like trouble. The primal parts of Fei's brain lit up at the thought of him. The fur along her spine rose. She crept closer through the foliage, wary of this stranger who sauntered through the spring growth with a tender footfall, as if he had planted it himself.

Shiny objects of brass and steel and other metals clinked on the bag at his back. He looked over his shoulder now and then, and Fei would drop down and back, then lope around the trails to catch him up ahead.

He was getting close, too close.

With fangs bared she leaped from the woods, barking and howling like a creature possessed. The man gave a shout of fright, fumbled for a pistol at his belt and fired. She had already leaped to a new position by then, ears flat, fangs bared, and every time he pressed on she would snap and hiss and lash out until him and howl to the woods for reinforcements.

Alone and fooled, he ran down the path he'd traveled from.

When him and his clinking pack had retreated, Fei's growls merged into a light yawn. She itched her chin, and trotted off to the Goddess' grave to nose around the lilies and make sure everything was as it should be.

But it wasn't.

The beautiful grey cloak, draped loving across the Goddess two thousand years ago, was gone.

At once Feiyan threw back her head and howled. He took it. She didn't know how or why or when but he had.

And he would pay with his life.

Hello, everyone! This is what I like to call a condensed story, sort of an expanded synopsis or summary. It's dense, like the old fairytales, moves quickly, and is projected to be about 10 or 11 chapters based on how I've written them. :) Enjoy!