The first time Veruca changed, it was like letting out a breath she had been holding for a long, long time. She'd been trapped, hateful, afraid of herself, like Oz's little girlfriend. But once she changed, once she overcame the fear and pain and shed that lie of skin and soap and propriety… It was fucking beautiful.
Going where she liked, taking what she wanted, hunting and fighting and fucking as she pleased. Some of the wild songs that she screamed to the moon, as she scattered the red flesh of her prey over the earth, were also sung to crowds a few days later as the first rumors of mysterious animal deaths trickled into town.
The wolf always waited in her skin, as she always waited in its. They were not halves, nor were they poles. Maybe it could seem like they were, but only to someone who liked to separate, who didn't know--how human was animal, how fluid was the seeming prison of one's skin. And Veruca--no matter how seeming her prison, no matter how thick her makeup or how sweet her smile or how solid her pale small ineffectual hands--was changeable and free. Forever.