The Warmest Night

The festival of The Warmest Night is the happiest occasion a Loup-Garou can have the joy of attending. It is the only time that packs put aside all interpersonal conflicts, creep out of hiding, and meet deep in the woods to make merry, share stories, see loved ones long estranged.
Much food and drink is had, the dancing carries on through the night, and the singing rings through the forest. Lone wolves prance around each other, vying for affections, hoping to perhaps meet a mate - difficult to do in these days of small packs and fugitive lives.
Despite all that, there is always a somber note - and not because one or two of the lone wolves may decide to brave the rainbow path. The Warmest Night is the most important event in any pack’s year, and only death or imprisonment will keep a Loup-Garou from attending. Despite that, every year, there are less and less of us. Sometimes it’s only a single wolf, and their pack can share specifics of the sad loss. Sometimes it’s only one, and their pack knows nothing - or professes to know nothing.
Sometimes entire packs are missing.
The Loup-Garou are well aware of our unprotected status in Midgard, allied with none of the remnants of the Fae courts, hunted by Heaven and Hell. Still, never is our precarious grasp on life so obvious as during Warmest Nights, casting shadows on even this, our most joyful celebration.
I can only hope that something changes, and one day we’ll be free to once again dance and sing without concern of slaughter. But I fear that is a fool’s dream.

On the night the wolf moon rises
And colors fill the sky
The packs will come together
To dance and sing and cry
Our joy will know no bounds
And pups will know no fear
But when the next moon rises
More family, disappeared