The first time I changed hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced before in my life. There was pain pinching my every nerve, popping in all of my joints, swirling in body as if it deserved to be there. Maybe it did. I could hear myself change. The cracking of my bones as they broke right before they fused with others or dissolved completely, the snap snapping of my tendons as they readjusted themselves to fit my new skeleton, the mushy squelch my muscles made as they configured to my new form.
Then it was silent. The pain stopped and everything that had seemed important faded until the only thing that was left was instinct. The urge to run, and to bite and mark out my territory because it was mine. I wasn't Olivia anymore. There was no Olivia. There was only the wolf who wanted out of this stinky wood dwelling that hid the outside.
So out the wolf went. The smells of the forest blew into my nose and mouth and I could taste. The snow and the bitter pine. The bush that looked dead was not, it was sleeping. I could smell the roots deep in the warm wet Earth living on. And the Earth it's self. Deep and enriched and so alive. Like dirt, like mud, like life it's self.
It tempted me, the Earth. Teased my senses and pricked at my paws. Pulling me, daring me to run to the end, to find the edge of Earth. I accepted the challenge.
There was nothing but the joy of running. Of hearing the bitter air stab my lungs, and feel the sharp prod in my chest. To push my paws, my legs, my body to its limits and just run. Feel the strength of each stride, propelling me forward father with each step. Bounding over logs, and drifts and dodging, weaving around the trees. My muscles screamed with delight, with exhaustion. My tongue lolled still alive with the smells. My lungs heaving working to supply me with the air I needed as the air attacked me from within, freezing and harsh. And right in the middle of running and instinct I wondered how I would get home.
Home. The word that was my undoing, as well as my only life line. It brought back images of my mother and my father and of the wood dwelling that hid the outside. And of Rachel and Grace and Jack. Jack shifting, writhing twisting on the floor becoming a wolf. Just as I had.
And the pain was back. The pain that stopped my running and bowed me over. That made the wolf whimpered and twitch. And it hurt. The fire and the cold in my bones. The scorching, burning friction. The paralyzing bitter cold, that would kill anything outside, anything without the wolf's winter jacket.
I shivered. I stood. Olivia was back. Olivia was present. But why was she out here? What had happened? My head was fuzzy, my fingers too stiff, too cold to move.
I glanced down. Wolf prints. Wolf prints? And image of Jack transforming to a wolf and the flash of pain, of remembered pain. Of the pain that came with becoming a wolf. I was like Jack, I was a wolf too. And somehow I did not remember anything of it. Nothing but the pain could be pulled from my memories. I had lost Olivia to the beast within myself, lost me to it.
Terror almost as bad as the pain crushed my heart enveloped my mind stopping all thought and sense of hope. Because there was no hope. There was nothing I could do, nothing that could happen. I had seen Jack in his torment and his pain and his anger, his depression. It was not something that could be left behind, something that could not be ignored. This was me. I was the
I was no longer Olivia.
I was cold. I was naked and cold and lost in the forest where there was no one to save me, no one to help me. I followed the prints because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Would the wolf prints lead me home? Had I started from my home?
It didn't matter but it did. Because my parents would need to see me, they would worry. But would they want me? As I was? Not their daughter but still in their hearts?
Would Rachel want my friendship? Even though I was not Olivia even though I could never speak with her. Would she think of me? If I changed in front of her would she accept me or scream?
Grace wouldn't mind. Grace knew, because she had the boy. The boy with yellow eyes named Sam who I'd met before Jack bit me. She would love me anyway. I knew she would, because she was one of us. She'd been bitten and so she had turned. But she hadn't changed. She was human Grace with Wolf inside her. Could she help me be human Olivia with Wolf inside me? Would she?
And Jack. What of him? He bit me, yes. As a human, yes. But he was desperate. He had family who loved him, who thought him dead. He loved him family. Isabel, Mr. Culpepper, his mother. He thought that Grace could help, and she can. Can she?
I'd reached the stinky wood dwelling that hid the outside. But that was my house, my home. I could not feel my feet, or were they paws? I knew my shape now was human but was I really human? Was I?
No. I wasn't. I was legend now, myth. Nothing like me existed anywhere but fairytales. And this was no fairy tale because there would be no happy ending.