AN - Well, here it is, my first FanFic piece and post as a writer.
For now, the "M" rating is for language, but in future chapters it will be for adult content. I will make sure to include a warning when lemonade is being served (and maybe even prepared, depending on how things go). Forgive me as, of course, I have no Beta and please review so I know whether to continue or not.
For all the purists out there, advance warning - this piece is mostly cannon, but there will be deviations, mistakes and new characters added. Also, if it seems like a slow start, bear with me we had to start somewhere and Leah and my demon said this was the proper beginning.
Stephanie Meyers owns all things Twilight, I do not.
Funny thing about wolves, they don't think in words.
In the mind of a running wolf, images flicker past. Everything is noticed and processed, but at that point, most of it passes right back out again.
Make no mistake – wordless and mindless are not the same.
The wolf does not run mindlessly, led only by the scent that fills it's nostrils or the sound that triggers its instinct to find cover. In the wolf existence, there is no need for name tags or categories or labels.
In the depths of the forest and the wolf mind, a tree stands just as what it is.
No name or genus attaches itself to the tree. No mental notes about height or color. When you sleep under a tree, it is simply where you chose to lay. When it blocks your view, you move your head. When your prey runs up it, it's gone and you are still hungry. In a wolf's mind, there is no word for tree.
It simply is just what it is.
There is the memory that leads her back to a kill left half eaten or a high perch overlooking a good hunting field that she passed in another Now.
Living in only Now she doesn't mourn their loss if things aren't where she left them. She does not waste her Now looking for a bygone kill or perch when there are other things to eat and a million other places she could be. She holds no expectations beyond her innate talent for survival and her ability to move from this Now to her next Now.
When words were her thoughts, she would have attached terms, names and categories to everything around her. If she bothered to think of it Now, it would be a parody of her Before. A laughable, and possibly thought provoking, perversion of the human condition; perhaps represented by a tree, thoroughly punched through with all the tags bearing all words that would have been assigned to all of her thoughts. The tags fluttering in the breeze like a sidewalk sale being passed by a bus. In the Before, everything had a name, an assessment and an appraisal that could be shared in symbols or sound. Green. Bark. Brown. Rough. Vein. Smooth. Bud. Root. Branch… But that was long ago. The tags had long since been ripped away and blown into dark corners or washed into unrecognizable clumps of litter by the rain. All no different than what – at one point in her existence – she would have called a "tick" was Now just something she scratched, because it needed to happen.
Long ago, in her Before, there had been words for time and miles. And though she had seen much of both, time and distance did not pass as it did in her Before. She simply flowed through them with the moons and rhythms of the forest.
In her Now there was the movement of her feet as they found effortless and silent passage over the snow. There was the occasional growl of her belly that told her to hunt. A heavy feeling in her body conveyed the need to sleep. And, as always, in the nature of nature, there was a feeling in a place that she had never had a word for, that told her to beware.
Languageless-ly, all these things flickered in and out of her Now and were either ignored or acted upon as her instinct told her. If she'd thought of long ago, she would remember that she had chosen to leave her Before and to live in her Now. But she didn't. As is the way with a wolf, she also didn't think of the ToCome. Those things were not part of Now. Before and ToCome were equally inconsequential; an old rabbit trail not worth following and a deer trail not yet made.
But even in a wolf's memory, and especially this wolf's memory, there were some things that nature would not allow her to let drift into her Before.
Being the wolf she was, there were only two things that drove her to run mindlessly. She always, without fail, ran from the smell and sound of anything human. For tucked deep in a corner of her being that she had long since stopped exploring, she carried a profound understanding of the danger that came with her very existence.
And being the wolf she was, she always, without fail, ran towards the smell of anything vampire. For in the center of her brain, well lit by the burning of everything from her Before, sat the blinding knowledge that they were the reason for her very existence.
Vampires were not in her thoughts Now.
The she wolf was hungry. She raised her muzzle to the air and caught the hot, sweet, utterly delicious smell of a female elk. She could tell, by smell alone, that the doe was young, healthy, alone and injured. Maybe it was a run in with a less skilled predator or a misstep between some rocks that had left the mighty elk-ess with a nasty gash – the wolf did not wonder how it happened.
A stray remnant of something from her Before made her stop to take one more good, deep breath before even turning towards the easy dinner. This doe, unlike so many others that the wolf had not taken in the past months, wasn't pregnant. There was no smell of milk or calf clinging to her either. She wasn't a mother, maybe never had been. With agility that could have only come from long forgotten practice since her Before, the query slipped from her mind even faster than it had streaked in and her mouth began to water...
Seth choked on his wolfy laughter as he fell out of the darkness of the tree line. He phased, clutching his stomach as the choking sound turned to human guffaws. The light blue tinge of his lips, a left-over from holding his breath, faded and he pinked up quickly as he continued to roll on the ground.
A wave of phase-heat and hysterical laughter rippled across the meadow.
The she wolf jumped heavily to her feet and phased, ducking behind a bush and snatching a sundress over her head. "You little shit! You weren't supposed to be on patrol for another hour!"
"OhmyGod! Oh! My! God!" Seth continued rolling on the ground strangling on his words. "Really? I wouldn't think you'd want anyone to remember you all soft and mushy like that."
Leah kicked him hard as she passed, thoroughly enjoying the sound of the snapping ribs and the howl of pain as she stomped away.