Play with caution ;;
I rolled over onto my back in the soft snowbank, letting the dry powder reshape itself around my weight. I could feel the cold seep through the double layered fur, and tiny pieces of the ice melting against my skin. The outside of my body might have cooled to be the same temperature as the ambient winter air around me, but under my skin I felt like my blood was boiling.
The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars and open enough that I could spot the milky way waving across the dark backdrop. The stars, some flickering in blue, some in yellow, lit up the night more than the moon did tonight – swirling in patterns and shapes that I might have been imagining among the empty universe… an awesome sight to behold. Rather, it might have been if I was really able to enjoy it.
It wasn’t getting any easier. I had left home only a few days ago and the anxiety that had built up in me kept me from sleeping most nights. I found myself tossing and turning, fighting relentlessly with my head for hours on end. So much so, that I began loosing track of how long I have actually been awake. If I had to take a guess… I would have guessed it’s been about six days. Six days since I’ve been hidden here in the empty wilderness. But I was no closer to freedom than I had been since the moment I turned away from my fathers scornful face.
When I stared up against the jeweled sky, it was as if there was something obstructing my view between it and my eyes. The obstruction was a face. It seemed trustworthy and empathetic at some moments, and twisted and misaligned during others. Sometimes it held no expression at all and just stared back at me with those dark holes for eyes, and drooping jaw exposing layers of serrated teeth. If I closed my eyes, it just became more real.
I let out a soft sigh, eyeing the billows of moist air cloud up in front of my face and slowly dissipate. The events of my initiation still loomed around my head like ghosts unable to move on to the next part of their journey. My face tightened into a frown as I couldn’t help the scene from playing over again. As soon as the scent hit my nostrils, it was like a battering ram had knocked the wind from my ribcage. There are no words violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment. Instantly, I was undone. I was nothing close to the stoic, quiet, and curiously natured wolf that I had once been. In that moment, I was a predator. And this helpless girl was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world that could have been more clear.
There was a crowd of wolves around me, chanting over and over again for me to make my move. They edged me closer to the brink of losing what I had worked so hard to keep together with their barks and growls of excitement. I hadn’t imagined that it would be like this; my turning. Thirst burned through my throat like fire and my mouth felt baked and dry, the fresh flow of saliva did nothing to dispel that sensation. My stomach twisted with hunger that only echoed my thirst. My muscles lowered my body down to the ground and coiled to spring.
There was a cowering form in front of me, and my initiation order was to end her life.
You see, this particular female was my age, and it was customary to slit her skin deep enough to unravel the bloodline within me – the nature of using our own kind’s blood during initiations and rituals to keep ourselves strong. I didn’t understand why, and I still to this day don’t. I didn’t want to be a monster. That’s how I saw them… the lot of ‘em.
Not a full second had passed. The young girl’s gaze met mind, and I saw myself reflected in the mirror of her glistening eyes. The shock of the face I saw there might have saved her life that day. For a moment, everything slowed down and the noises around me softened. The fire lit everything else up so brilliantly and I felt a thick haze wafted over my brain. I could barely think through it. My bloodlines instincts raged, resisting control, incoherent. She and I shared the same thought just then – the need to escape. She made the first move and darted to a small opening between an elders legs. Her haste and fear made her clumsy and she tripped forward, falling over her own paws. She was vulnerable, weak. It only made my fathers voice in my head grow louder.
I tried focusing on the memory of the face I had seen in her eyes, a face I had never seen before. It was my own, but a twisted version of it – one I didn’t recognize. She was picked up my the scruff and tossed haphazardly back into the ring, sliding within inches of me. I could hear the roaring sound of my father over the yelps and howls… he wanted this done quickly. Her scent swirled around me again, scattering my thoughts and nearly propelling me toward her throat.
No.
My head shook from side to side and I hastily rolled onto my belly, just so I could shove my head under my paws and curl my body tightly into a ball.
“Please go away, please go away…” I quietly begged my thoughts. Back during that time, I remembered telling myself during the brief moment of clarity that I didn’t have to kill. That I didn’t have to listen to that monster in my head. That I was a rational thinking creature, and that I had a choice. There was always a choice.
For my family though, it was very different. To kill another of our kind during this turning of age was a fundamental law that was repeated over and over again to us from the moment we could hear. The day of reckoning came when we were done with our year long training and it was something that all males had to go through. No amount of bitching was tolerable. It was either do what was needed to be done, or be done in yourself. Honestly…I had never been so scared in my life… and because I chose to run, I now felt like I had a warrant out for me. Here out away from all of that, I felt sane again. I could think again. And I could fight again. I could fight what I didn’t want to be.
I laid there, silently sniffling back tears, as still as a rock against the bushes. Hoping that it might swallow me up and maybe adopt me into its family instead.
I speak • I think • Dimitri speaks
