Charter 4: of milk and dumpsters
I don't understand it, Charles. I'm a geneticist, not a psychologist.
And?
And I happen to have it on good authority that genetics and biology determine how, at what rate, and at what time a person grows. And as far as I can tell, that's how mutation works as well. Mutation is after all only an expression of genetics and wholly dependent on such. I mean, that is what I've pretty much based my entire philosophy on. It sure would be a shame to have to throw away all my life's work now.
Come now. No need to turn to dramatics. You know as well as I do that nothing is based 100 percent on biology. There are other… external aspects.
Yes, other physical aspects. Drink milk and grow a foot. Even in these cases, these 'external' aspects are working along with biology. There's a difference between milk adding a few inches to a person's height and nutrients in the milk enhancing an already occurring growth spurt.
And what about stress? Mental stress has been known to cause several physical changes in one's body: ulcers, increased blood pressure and heart rate, loss of hair –
Yes, I understand, you have no hair. Honestly Charles, I'm not even sure what we're arguing about anymore.
Argument for the sake of argument?
Like college students again. But the bottom line is we have this girl that's simply a mystery. We can't help her with a problem until we understand what that problem is. How can her mutation, a very physical mutation, occur at such an early age, before her body is physically ready and what might this mean for her life?
Moira, for my sake, just this once, think of it in mental terms. You say in human form she's incredibly shy and self-conscious. Now whether or not this was imposed on her by others, her beliefs, or herself, what if for her to become this way was, somehow unnatural? She had to push away this less controllable side of herself. The side that comes out in her wolf form. But it is my belief that nothing in the mind is ever completely rid of anything. Maybe this side of her felt the need to be released so strongly that it was the actual catalyst used to reveal her mutation. Perhaps that pushed her mutation to take shape before she was otherwise biologically ready. I know most scientists believe these mutations not present since birth to be directly linked to puberty, but perhaps this let's say 'genetic puberty' acts only in tandem with biological puberty and is not necessarily dependent on it.
Well Charles, I do hope you're right. This would certainly shed new light on the situation. In fact, depending on how serious the situation becomes, we might have to confront the girl before we originally assumed. But then again, if the situation is as you say, I fear our little Rahne has a very difficult road set out for her.
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There's a dog. Brownish fur. Maybe. It's dark and she can't really tell. But it's huge, she knows that.
It's weird. Like she's watching from above. Or she's having an out of body experience. It leaves her wondering what the point of it all was. In this whole astral thing she can go pretty much anywhere, right? So she follows a dog around? Or was she led to the dog? Everything does have a purpose.
But it's not like she believes in that stuff anyways.
She recognizes the place at least. It's downtown. An alleyway behind the restaurant. But it's kind of interesting because it looks different she thinks, although she can't tell why. It surprises her that she recognizes it at all because as long as she could remember, she has never been here before. No matter what they show in the movie's, nobody just randomly loiters around restaurant dumpsters. That was just asking for trouble.
And then suddenly she can hear what the dog hears and she can smell what the dog smells. The old homeless guy coughing down the street and the feet of mice twittering. If mice's feet twittered. She also smells the trash…
And it's horrid. Worse than anything she ever smelled before. It makes her want to hold her nose but of course she can't. She doesn't know how. But then for some reason she doesn't want to. The trash is putrid and rancid and every other word that means the same thing that she can't seem to think up at the moment but she's inexplicably attracted to it. There's something interesting in it and she wants to know what. Like a mystery. And now she sees what the dog sees too which is exciting because she really wants to know what is in that dumpster.
And then the dog blinks its eyes and when they open she's not in the alley anymore. She, they, are on a street and there's three dogs staring back at them. Her dog growls and bares its teeth. One of the others whimpers but they don't back down.
She smells the area. It doesn't smell familiar. She realizes it's not her dog's territory. It scares her that she would even know a thing like that.
Her dog barks again and the others start backing away. They're too small to win a fight anyways.
But her dog lunges at them.
Part of her tells her to make it stop because it isn't right and the other part tells her to enjoy it because it is about time. But it doesn't matter anyways because she can't do anything. She can only watch. So she watches. Watches as her dog attacks all three at once and claws at them and bites at them as they try to get away. And then she realizes something else too. She can taste what her dog tastes because all of a sudden her mouth is filled with metal and she feels like her tongue is drowning in blood. And it's horrifying to her yet oh so satisfying. And she stops referring to it as her dog. Because it's not her dog anymore. It's her. And it's her claws that pierce more skin and her teeth that rip more fur and it's her that revels in the feel of it all.
But then she hears something else and she turns around. There's the other dog ready to strike and she closes her eyes tight because she knows what's coming and despite everything she really, really, wishes she were just watching from above again.
Then she opens her eyes and it's all gone.
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Rahne opens her eyes slowly. It's almost summer so the sun starts rising earlier every day. Then her body shivers as a cold breeze brushes past her. But she closes her window every night before she goes to bed, which also means the light shouldn't be getting in…
This wakes her with a jolt. It happened again didn't it?
She looks around. She's on the street this time. How did she ever get out of the house? The sun is just starting to rise so she has maybe an hour to get back home. But she doesn't even know where she is. She begins to panic a little and the hairs on her arm start to rise. Her arm! She looks down and it's completely bare. Everything is missing. Even her shoes. All that remains are the top half of her pants that are too torn to stay up on their own. Could she do it? Walk home barefoot and topless? But it's not like she had any other choice.
Rahne is halfway to twelve but she thanks God ten times over that she hasn't hit puberty yet. If she is caught, she could pass as a boy, and hopefully none of this would get out. But suddenly all she can hear is Reverend Craig's voice in her head talking about women's whoring ways and all she could see is an image of herself burning in hell.
She quickly throws an arm over herself protectively. And then she feels something on her shoulder. It's sticky and wet. Somehow she knows right away that it's blood. She does a quick search of her body. Nothing. She isn't hurt. So where did the blood come from?
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It doesn't take her long to figure out where she is. And it's only about a twenty-minute walk to the church and her house from there. Of course she doesn't have her keys or anything so she wonders if she can get in through her second story window, where she assumes she got out in the first place. She tries climbing the tree outside but she never had much practice climbing trees and she especially can't do it without shoes on. But she tries again and she manages to get a hold of one of the limbs. Then her feet slip and she's dangling not too far off the ground but far enough. She tries pulling herself up onto the limb and just when she thinks she's going to make it, she hears the crack.
It sounds just like it does in the movies. The branch falls and she goes with it, landing with a thud, the branch on top of her. A light turns on inside the house and she really really wishes it's not Reverend Craig. But she sees the shadows right before the door opens and it looks like the whole world is coming to greet her. Reverend Craig opens the door too quickly for her to run, but she is scared enough that the thought never even crosses her mind.
"Rahne!" She stares at the Reverend with nothing but genuine fear in her face. She barely even notices her other housemates staring at her. Two of them yell or argue or something and Rahne can intermittently hear words like evil and devil. The other one just stands there and watches.
But what she really cares about is the man stalking after her with a look she had rarely seen in all her days. A look that some might consider evil in its own right.
He grabs her by the upper arm and drags her away never even attempting to remove the broken limb from on top of her. Unable to get to her feet, the girl is literally pulled along the ground. The Reverend is too angry to even talk and Rahne is too scared to listen. But she does understand something. Something along the lines of she looks, or perhaps she smells, like sin and debauchery. Demon seed?
Inside the house he raises the girl to her feet and hands her a jacket, which she quickly uses to cover herself. He looks her up and down while summing her up. He yanks the chain off her chest, snapping it painfully behind her neck. "You are unworthy of this cross," he whispers to her maliciously. Rahne's eyes begin to fill with tears. He thrusts a bible into her hands and then throws her to the floor of their hallway closet already adorned with candles and pictures of saints. Ready for worship. The door begins to close for what she knows will be like an eternity. "You will come out only when you purge yourself of these evil spirits," he tells her. The only other sound she hears is the distinctive click of the closet door locking.
It takes her some twenty hours of reading God's words aloud before she loses her voice. But she continues on in a harsh whisper for another fifteen before the Reverend opens the closet door. It takes five more and utter exhaustion for Rahne to be satisfied with her own repentance. Three weeks to gain back her cross, on a new chain. But the guilt? She worries there is no time long enough to rid her of that.
Next Chapter: math, Rahne figures out what's going on. Unfortunately so do others.