Tucked away in the leftmost corner of Spindle’s new room, past his cotton candy pink shag carpet and overstocked workshop, the werewolf has erected what appears to be an altar. Beneath a cat’s cradle web of thread that forms a dome over the whole production sit jumbles of esoteric objects carved from wood and bone; surreal cross-stitched landscapes where landmarks sit at odd angles, their proportions bloated; old cell phones soldered into a rat’s nest of wires; and a mixed media statue of a sitting wolf made from natural and electronic elements, and spray painted with vivid slashes of red. Before the shrine the student has laid a woven rug with five wolves joined teeth to tail in a circle, each a different color: ice blue; black; russet; grey; and scarlet. On more than one occasion while walking by the room Tag has spotted his apprentice kneeling on the mat with his head bowed, his fingers busy with some unseen art.
Tag can’t really help but notice. Spindle never did make any efforts to hide his shrine or his devotions. He’d resolved to let his apprentice keep his spiritual practices private, but really, is it really intruding on something that’s held openly? He pauses silently by the door to the werewolf’s room as he grapples with the decision.
Spindle doesn’t speak as he prays, but Tag does see his arms moving, the elbows turning in and out in a knitting pattern. His toes wiggle in time to some internally held beat. The show goes on for another few minutes before he climbs to his feet, setting down whatever he’d been working on at the foot of the altar. When he looks over his shoulder and catches sight of Tag he grins and waves. “H-hi! What’s up? Did you, um, n-need something?”
Tag remains at the door a little awkward for having been spotted. “Nothing. No. Sorry,” he says turning to leave.
Spindle stands up, his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket. “H-hey, you don’t have to go. Um. Or apologize. What’s wrong?”
“Everything is fine,” he says. “Just passing by. Didn’t mean to interrupt your reverie.”
“Oh. Um. You didn’t. Um.” Spindle looks over his shoulder at the wolf-god. “Um. S-sorry, it’s not private or anything. Um. I do my rites out in the open most of the time, and I sort of wanted to let you wizards watch if you wanted. Um. I figured Grimnir would want to since he thinks everything spirity is cool. I was just making Sagrim-Ur a scarf anyway.”
Tag looks in at the idol, his curiosity having gotten the better of him. “It’s your tribal totem right? The one you’re tied closest to?”
“Y-yeah. Um. I guess that’s one way to put it?” Spindle scratches behind his neck. “I sort of just try to stay in contact. Um. They don’t answer back very much, but that’s okay. They’ve, um, g-got a lot of other stuff to do. But it helps me focus, and inspires me. I’ve been pretty lost since Des Moines. Um. Is this sort of how you do it? I stole some ideas from human stuff I saw in books.”
Tag gives a knowing nod. “You haven’t spoken a lot about your time in Des Moines.” He silently motions his request to come in.
Spindle quivers at his own rudeness. He steps far inside, making more space than Tag needs. “Um. It was pretty rough. R-really rough. A lot of bad things happened to a lot of good people, and it’s been sort of hard to, um, f-feel…” He looks at his bookshelves for inspiration. “Um. Faith, I guess.”
Tag does a short tour around the perimeter in the room. His eyes scan over the handmade furniture and original artwork. He stops at the shrine. “I never should have let you stay there. I knew it was trouble as soon as that ‘CEO’ of theirs made their presence known on the boards.”
There’s a partially-finished scarf at the base of the statue. It has a simple green and silver pattern, and the yarn looks like real wool. Tag’s seen those colors somewhere before.
“Y-you think you could have stopped me going?” Spindle asks, surprised into stillness. “It wasn’t really your decision.”
Tag’s answer is hesitant, as though he’d had to consider his answer. “No. I suppose it wasn’t. But I should have made the option to come back more forcefully.”
Spindle eyes his teacher, his expression slowly settling into a frown. He takes a seat on his shag carpet. “I can’t just teleport away from school. Um. It’s really, really important for me to stay p-pretty human in a human life. I’m a student. I, um, n-need to study, and mingle, and be just as human as I am spirit. It’s really not good to magic all my problems away.”
“You can’t magic your problems all away. But you shouldn’t have been alone either.”
“I think if you’d gone there y-you would have tried to kill them, and they would have tried to kill you, and it would have made everything even worse. They sort of have to just live with their mistakes because I don’t think we could take them all.”
“I wouldn’t have killed them.” Tag says with a small roll of his eyes. “But I’ve seen more than one brood of Begotten effectively take control of an area and not for the better.”
“W-well, what would you have done?”
“I’d have listened to you for one thing,” Tag says kneeling in front of the statue to look at the scarf.
The scarf has a simple zig-zag pattern, the kind Spindle can likely zone out while knitting. It has tassels on its completed end. The way it’s coiled jogs Tag’s memory: He’s seen those colors on a snake.
“I don’t really know if I could have given you advice. I d-didn’t really know what to do, either. But, um, that still means a lot.”
“You knew that the Beasts clustering up together was making the Shadow worse. You knew that granting sanctuary to a spirit Ridden was a horrible idea. They were too busy identifying with it to see any danger or care.” He picks up the unfinished scarf. “Was this for snakes? Did you like snakes?”
Spindle blinks. “Um. No? Th-that’s for Sagrim-Ur. It’s a Slytherin scarf. I’m s-sort of trying to make clothes for the statue so I can dress them up in all kinds of weather. I thought it would be cute. And, um, yeah. It seemed like they were trying to convince me they were Ridden.”
“My point exactly. They’re too much like the ones we’re supposed to be fighting. They should be held at arm’s length.” He puts the scarf down. “I don’t recall that tribe.”
The blink is slow this time. “Th-that’s not a tribe. Um. Remember when I freaked out that I wasn’t a Hufflepuff anymore? Um. A-and I said I was scared I was evil because I was in Slytherin?”
Tag closes his eyes slowly as if reliving an irksome memory. “Yes, and I told you I thought you were taking an internet personality test a bit to strongly.”
“I am not! I’m honoring Sagrim-Ur’s cunning!” Spindle huffs. “Symbols are really important.”
“They are, I suppose sometimes in spite of their source material,” Tag says with a sigh.
The little werewolf huffs again. “I think I would have freaked out about your magic a lot more if Harry Potter wasn’t around.”
“You can’t be serious. It isn’t like werewolves don’t have magic of their own.”
“N-no, I am serious. It helped me accept a lot of stuff. You said you even make potions.”
“I don’t. Some of us do…look, that’s not the point!”
Spindle sets his chin. “Werewolves aren’t exactly accurate in Harry Potter either, b-but Lupin’s still a pretty good guy, and I like that.”
“Who? A werewolf colleague of yours I haven’t met yet?” Tag’s question is as genuine as his ignorance.
“N-no, he’s a fictional character.” Spindle grins. “He’s a really nice werewolf who tries his best.”
Tag just shakes his head. “So you say you had a crisis of faith over in Des Moines?”
“Y-yeah, I guess. Um. The other werewolves there weren’t very helpful, and most of the others were either awful or n-not all that helpful either. I tried everything to make them help me, b-but I think everyone hated me by the end. It sort of killed my confidence.”
“Then what were they all concerned about?”
Spindle blushes. “They said I was bossy.”
Tag snickers a little bit. “Well, what of it? Were they doing anything more important? Sounds to me like a mass apathy. That’s not your fault.”
“N-no, but it-” Spindle chews on the tip of his tongue. “Um. It’s not that it’s my fault, b-because it’s not. I just feel bad because I d-don’t know how useful my way of doing things is.”
“Isn’t maintenance of the Shadow pretty important?”
“V-very! I just mean…I tried to be nice. Maybe it would have worked better if I wasn’t nice.”
Tag pats the floor next to him. “I’ve got a reputation. Some of it engineered, some of it wild speculation and fanciful recollection. I’ve learned to make use of it. But. If you can get people to follow your example out of respect then you’ll be the most effective at what you do. I think you can be that example.”
Spindle shuffles his butt next to Tag. “I kind of hope the Arrow teaches me how.”
“Since the Ten Second War we’ve been diminished to a shadow of ourselves.” Tag lets out a sigh. His forehead wrinkles at some distant memories. “Most of our leaders are dead. Even here in Seattle the only other Arrow is Skald, and she’s been…well, she seems to be fighting her own demons. I suspect a lot of your lessons are going to be forged in the thick of things.”
“Th-that’s okay. At least I’m not doing it alone, right?” Spindle nudges him with his shoulder.
Tag ruffles the pink hair. “No. No you’re not. You have your brothers and sisters in arms and your faith.” He points to the shrine.
“Y-yeah.” Spindle reclines with a grin, resting his head on his hands. “Y-you might like Sagrim-Ur if you met them. They’re curious, and smart, and they don’t let themselves get tied down. Maybe I could introduce you one day.”
“Heh. Wouldn’t that make Grimnir jealous. Though given his chosen name he might not feel too keenly on meeting giant wolves that could eat him.”
“F-Fenrir is a different wolf. Um. I’m not a Blood Talon. Sagrim-Ur chose me.”
“Thank the heavens for that,” Tag says grinning widely.