The Awakening Prt 3

I gaze down and I see paws that startle me at first. Gasping at the closeness and realize they are mine, where my hands should be, flat on the ground. Large, clawed but strong paws, larger than I thought they would be. I lift one and shake it, almost as if I need to convince myself that I can use and control this limb, it’s truly connected to my body. My legs are solid, with thick silver-grey fur and all the way up my muscular chest, I have a streak of purest snow white that travels as far as I can see. I stare at it, lean back and pull my chin in tight to follow it until I can’t strain any further to see.

I have very little memory of my mother in her true form, but I know this is from her. She was a white and my father a silver yet it’s rare to combine both in such a way. Most wolves are brown or grey … white is a mutation that’s almost unheard of and my mother used to try and hide herself because it brought only stares.

I shake my head, the unfamiliar weight of a different form pulling me from side to side, not fully in control of my limbs or movements just yet but aware it’s so much bigger than my human skull. Staggering on strange legs and fall down flat, splaying out and bumping my undercarriage as I collide with stone. Aware suddenly to the scene around me, coming back into focus and realizing we are still being watched. Sobering fast as my new metabolism pushes the last of the drugs out of my system and cleanses my blood.

The atmosphere is charged, and I’m surrounded by newly changed wolves of all shades of grey and brown, although I’m the only one with white in my coat. Turning as the Shaman’s chants draw my eyes back to him and trip over my own uncoordinated self as I try to right myself and get up. It’s hard to use my hands as front legs and I instinctively rear backwards too far onto my haunches, losing my balance and reeling forward again to correct it, before tumbling face forward to the ground once more and meeting the dust with a lower jaw clunk.

“It gets easier. Try to stay on your feet. All four of them.” The voice above me pulls my head to tilt towards it and I recoil as I realise Colton Santo is standing right by me, watching as I make a spectacle of myself, in falling flat out on new legs. I don’t know if I’m shocked that he spoke to me, or wary that he did.

I’ve never trusted anything about him, or any of his motives, and wonder when he got over here, so close. Avoiding looking directly at him, keeping me eyes averted from his and attempt to get to grips with this weird body and focus on learning to use it. All I can do is whimper back, realizing I have no ability to form words this way and go into my own head link instinctively.

Wolves in the same pack have a connection mentally, so they can communicate without talking, which admittedly is impossible as a wolf. We don’ have the vocal cords for human talking. It’s also possible when close enough to talk to one not from your own pack. If they are willing to hear you.

It feels strange. I attempt to link with him, weirded out by this new, almost natural ability I didn’t have before. Overwhelmed by all of this and not sure if I am still heavily drugged when in this form, or if this surreal new way to experience everything is wolf sense. Things affect us differently as humans, and this disorientation might just be something I have to adjust to.

Yeah well, walk it off. Learn fast. He links me back, a husky familiarity to his voice inside my head that does strange things to my stomach. It’s hardly a polite response and the tone tells me he doesn’t really want to have any sort of communication with me, especially not in a head link.

I’m not one of his pack and I’m not even on the same level as him. It’s disrespectful to try. As if to further demonstrate the point, he walks off towards his father and I flop down to get to grips with everything that I just got hit with. I’m heavy, not sure how to navigate my dog body when I’ve spent my life walking on two legs. I must weigh four times my usual weight for sure, although the size of my paws, suggest maybe even more.

“The turning will not last ... only moments fleeting for your first time. When you come out, you will be awoken, and your path will lead you to your destiny. Pay attention, be alert. You are now on the other side.” The Shaman states it loudly and it echoes around the mountain like a sort of prophetic song. One I have heard so many times but yet this time, it finally means something to me.

I get up on unsure legs once more, slowly, like Bambi on new-born limbs and lift my head as I know I’m meant to. In unison with all around me, we stretch our necks out, lift our noses to the heavens and howl at the moon for the first time in our lives, as one united pack. No matter who we are, where we are from, whatever our bloodline or our past. Long, soulful with meaning. A sound that echoes around us, through us and is joined by the hundreds who watch until we fill the night sky with a somber eerily hum that will reverberate around the mountains and put the fear of god into the wildlife. United in one song that finalises our transformation.

It feels strange at first, my throat vibrates, it aches and rasps my vocal chords, but as my belly empties, my air departs and the longest yowl comes cascading out of me, until it scratches my throat and makes me breathless, I feel alive. Like I have been holding my breath and waiting for this my whole life. I guess I have. This is what I was born to be and with the awakening, comes freedom.

I can leave.

I can run.

I can live off the land and hunt to survive. I’m no longer bound by the confines of humans in terms of getting by. Wolves can live anywhere as long as they can hunt and although we are pack animals in mentality, I’ve heard stories of isolated wolves doing fine on their own. That is what I have planned, longed, waited for and I know where I’m heading. Can finally realize my dream of leaving all of this behind me and finding my solitary peace somewhere out there. As far away from these mountains and people as I can, and never looking back.

As soon as I relax, our call stops and the energy in me fades fast. Overcome with fatigue that makes me slump back down and flake out on my belly, sighing as my body tingles and itches with a thousand little tremors. Glancing down in time to watch as everything changes back faster than I thought it would.

Fur that was keeping me warm, on paws instead of hands… it all begins to recede and unlike my transformation to beast, the reversal is not painful at all. It’s fast, almost instant and before I can blink or even get to grips with what is happening, I am nakedly human. Smeared in my own blood and flat out in a huddled heap on the floor which saves me some of my dignity by shielding my body.

I scramble to pull my body into a ball, aware I am completely uncovered and exposed to the hundreds of eyes around us. I jump when my blanket is tossed towards me by the nearby Damon, smirking as his eyes devour my nudity and I recoil. Embarrassed, ashamed, at being naked in front of everyone and mad as hell he made sure I would have to cross eight feet to get the blanket. I glare at him, forgetting myself for a moment and then ponder not going to get it and huddling up to cover myself instead.

Others were tossed theirs directly and looking around I realise I am the only one who has to go crawling for hers, like an animal. He is trying to humiliate me, and I move fast to catch it. Shocked when the slightest movement sends me shooting towards him at lightning speed and I end up almost at his feet in the blink of an eye.

“Wow” I blurt out loud and get laughed at by someone nearby as they realise how naïve I am about the speed and power we all just inherited. Another change in me I have to get used to. I grab the blanket and try and crawl backwards while pulling it over me and fall onto my back as it’s jerked tight and yanked back taut, sending my head crashing on the smooth stone below me and bouncing my skull painfully.

Damon sniggers, his foot on the edge of it as he looks down at me with complete disdain. Laughing at how much he is enjoying making a show of me and I have no choice but to try and pull the blanket from him once more. My face reddening with heat, aware of many more muffled sniggers and laughs at my expense and I can’t conceal the shame washing over me.

I know others are watching; my senses are hitched up real high and my body goosebumping all over in response. I can feel them on me from all over and I want to sink into the ground and disappear. I yank but the blanket begins to tear from the pressure nearer my end and I have no choice but to stop or be left with a scrap that will cover nothing.