Title: Mountain Sound
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Categories: AU, child emissaries, actual-wolf werewolves, drama, angst, romance
Length: Medium (2,454 words)
Warnings: Brief mention of past character deaths

Author on LJ: NA
Author Website: hayesgeneration

Author's Summary:The child emissaries usually never live past their fifth year with the wolves. The boy sitting on the tree stump can't be more than eight summers old, maybe less, and he has big, dull eyes that land on Derek first when they break the clearing. He doesn't even flinch; Derek does.

Review:
I usually go for fics with a lot of dialogue, and there's not much in the way of that here, but there's an old world Grimm's tales tone to this, and some thoughtful, spare writing that goes along with that. Stiles is an orphan from a village with a Druid medicine woman and townspeople who're wary of wolves. The werewolves rarely take human form, and emissary children routinely die young, "quietly burned out with earth-bound magic as old as their species."

I'm not sure of all the details of the truce between the wolves and the village, and I can't say why Stiles doesn't speak for years on end. But that's because the focus is more on the feel of this world then the facts of it. There's tradition and inevitability, and of course Stiles manages to be the exception to everyone's expectations (probably even his own). This is told from Derek's point of view, so we know more about how Derek feels and how the years bring him to the point of loving Stiles.

Mountain Sound