NAISSANCE DU LOUP
'Monster. Monster. MONSTER.' The word became a litany in Sophia's head as she ran from the scene that had just occurred. The horrified look in Scott's eyes, the smug satisfaction in Luke's. Glances into a world she had been trying to block.
"Sophia, stop," a familiar male voice called. She continued to run, her body rushing with adrenaline. But the extra speed her still near human adrenaline gave her was no match for that of a full skinwalker, which she realized as she fell to the ground under Luke's body.
"Shhh. It's okay. I've got you." Luke said, trying to calm her.
"Let go of me," she replied, struggling to get free, to run to wherever she would be safe.
"Sophia, this is natural."
"Luke, let go of me." Sophia tried to push him away but she couldn't get enough leverage. She had to get away from him. From all of this mess that had become her life. "Let go of me!" she repeated angrily. Pushing him away with her hands, she ran without looking back. If she had, she would've seen that she had pushed Luke away with a gust of wind that sprang forth from her hands.
She ran for miles, not quite sure where she was going, only that she knew she had to be there. She was still running when she heard a familiar female voice in her head.
"Sophia?"
For this voice, the voice of one of her closest friends, she stopped.
"Ruby, oh god Ruby. Help me," she said, collapsing on the forest floor. Ruby, still in her white wolf form, looked at the young girl she regarded as her sister. Her wolven senses informed her that Sophia's change was close; and that Sophia, who had fought the change she feared not even knowing why she feared it, would need all the help she could get. Shifting back into human form she called for the one person she knew would help. "Marie. Help me." she said before going to Sophia's side.
"Sophia stay with me." The girl was flushed with the high temperature that brought on the change. There was only one place the girl would be safe while she changed, a cave deep in the woods. Sacred but secret. But Sophia was in no shape to get there.
"Marie."
Sophia wondered briefly why Ruby was calling out to her dead mother, but the pain rippling through her caused by bones breaking and reforming and her organs shifting internally was to much, and she collapsed again. Vomiting up the remains of her dinner, she tried to go on all fours, and started to collapse. Ruby caught the younger girl as she began to pray the forgotten prayers desperate for help.
"Fire." Sophia mumbled not noticing the burst of flames that encircled them.
Ruby did notice, however, and she knew what caused it. Thinking back to when Sophia was younger, before her mother died, Ruby remembered what to do. "Sophia, call for rain. A nice cooling shower will help you."
Rain would feel good. It would cool her down. She knew how to do it to.
"Rain."
Ruby was rapidly realizing that something else besides Sophia's wolven nature was being released as a brilliant blue-white light appeared and dissipated to reveal a beautiful woman in her late twenties.
"We need to get her to the cave." The woman nodded and placed one hand on Sophia, the other on Ruby and they disappeared from the forest, reappearing in the sanctuary of the cave moments later.
Sherman was there, lighting the ritual candles. The woman spared him a brief glance as they walked Sophia to the bed. Sophia's skin was red with the fever of the change, but patches of white fur had begun to spring up out of her skin.
Outside the cave, Ruby's ears picked up the wailing of wind and the increasingly heavy sound of rain pelting the ground. There were piercing claps of thunder and streaks of lightening so bright that when they flashed it was as bright as day. Yet one teenage girl who lay in excruciating pain was oblivious to the storm and completely unaware of the fact that all the damage caused was because of her.
Sophia screamed as her limbs reshaped themselves into a wolf's. She was halfway through the flip, but still fighting it, struggling to stop the unstoppable process.
Marie leaned down on the bed and placed her hands on Sophia.
"Baby, it's mommy. Sophia, it's time to let go." Marie Donner spoke calmingly to her daughter. "You don't have to fight this or be afraid of it. This is what you are meant to be."
Listening to the vaguely familiar voice Sophia became visibly calmer as the final stage of the flip occurred. A brief flash of light and lying on the rough cot in the cave instead of a human girl was a pure white wolf. The violent weather stopped as abruptly as it began while its creator slept.
The adults in the room, two living and one dead, looked at each other knowing the day they had feared had finally come.
Marie spoke to Sherman "Get Matt. It has begun."