Chapter 3

A rude awakening

Yan yawned, and got up. He was still half asleep, but he realized he probably should get up. " I'm gonna go get us some breakfast Sasha, just wait here." His eyes were barely open, but he managed, somehow, to get through the confusing alleyways back to the market district.

When he arrived at the exit, the place where the last alley transferred straight into the market district, he noticed something very different about it. "It looks just as booming as usual and… so much bigger than usual?"

He was right. Everything was bigger than usual. The wooded shop stalls seemed a few feet seemed to tower above him, and he had to look up to see the different people. Was he crawling or something?

He started getting a little tense. The image of the wolf kept pounding in his head. "Is something happening to me again?" He spoke aloud to himself in his confusion, "Umm, what's going on?"

He was starting to get unnerved so, doing what anyone in their right mind would do, he ran straight into the middle of the street.

People selling goods, people bartering with sellers for better prices, people just hanging around for fun; they all stopped straight in their tracks, and stared. One person yelled, "Oh my god! Is that what I think it is?" Soon after, another voice shouted "But, I thought… I thought…" Soon after, a symphony of shouting began, and it was beyond Yan to know what to do.

He stood there puzzled. "Why is everyone so scared of me?"

"Everyone its Yan… don't you recognize me?"

And of course…. no one did. Every word he spoke only made them more and more scared. As he looked through the variety of faces, he saw a common motif of fear in all their expressions. He ran through the street, his feet digging into the ground every step he took. He was traveling way faster than he normally would, which shocked him as well.
"Why am I going so fast? What's going on? Why is everyone so scared of me!?"

The questions repeated and pounded over and over again in his head, and seeing that he there was no other option, he ran into a random alley he saw on the left, and went as deep as he could through the labyrinth of alleys.

About a minute into the run, he saw the white kitten, but now he didn't have to look as low to see it.

He stopped straight in his tracks now, and shouted, "YOU! You made this all happen. Ever since I saw you, strange things have been happening to me!"

He threw his hand toward the creature to grab it, but…

"Where is my hand…!? What the hell is this? A paw? What the hell is going on!?"

The cat stared at him as if he was crazy. "Hey mister, I'd appreciate it if you didn't attack me when I'm trying to talk to you."

Yan couldn't take it anymore. He was going crazy. Actually, he had to be going crazy. There was no other solution to the problem that would explain everything. "What the hell, you can talk!? What's going on?!"

The kitten looked at him for a few seconds still puzzled, seeing if Yan would come to his senses; of course he didn't. "Well mister, just go look in the mirror. I think you'll find your answer there."

There was a broken chunk of a glass mirror lying on the floor next to both of them, so Yan decided to go see for himself.

"Aaaaaaagh! What is this!"

His fur glistened in the shine of the sunlight, and every hair looked like a knife ready to cut. His teeth were sharpened and glowed like small little stars in its mouth, but they were ready to bite off appendages. His claws were a beautiful black, but his fur was a contrasting white.

He saw the creature that he saw a few days ago in the mirror, except now he was that creature. "I'm a monster! I knew I was cursed as soon as I saw that thing back yesterday and It's all your fault this is happening I don'tknowwhattod do I have a tail oh god help me!"

As Yan's sentences words and sentences were melding together from confusion, the cat was starting to get a little annoyed. "Mister, calm yourself down."

The cat's calm voice angered him even more. Why was the cat acting so easygoing when he just cursed him for who knows how long? "Did someone tell you to get me cursed? This isn't the Darcia family curse is it? I've heard too much about how people go crazy from that!"

The kitten maintained its calmness. "You're so weird; you don't even act like the other wolves…"

Yan was shocked. Was he not the only one?

"Wait, there are more? How many others are there? But I thought… I thought… wolves were extinct."

"Mister, you're living proof that that theory is wrong. Just leave me alone."

The kitten ran away, leaving Yan alone in the middle of that secluded alleyway. The light post shone in on the center of the alley, leaving the sides a little dark. Yan quickly squirmed backward into that darkness, scared of what he had become; scared of himself.

"I wonder how Sasha is. She's the closest thing to family I've got. Did it happen to her too?"

He ran back through the alleys the way he came from the market place. There were two armed guys coming out of a van that had written "Government Officers" on it.

"Oh… they're probably after me…"

He ran stealthily behind the first shopping stand on the side of the road, then to the next, and to the next, and so on and so forth. All the people that used to be carousing around there had left probably scared of another "monster attack". He tried to be as careful as possible.

Just a few moments after Yan started his stealthy escape, he heard a snap. As cliché as it seemed, he had stepped on a twig.

"Only I would be this unlucky…"

"Look over there! The dog, it's over there!"

The animal control agents ran toward him, but Yan didn't run away. In fact, he had an impulse to jump at them, and he did. Moments later, one of the guards was pinned to the floor, his blood covering a one foot radius around his head.

"What just happened? Did I kill him? Ow! I'm getting… sleepy…"

He woke up again. Three of the walls around him were a saturated black, while one wall wasn't a wall at all, it was bars. There were others. Straight in front of him was an auburn furred she-wolf with sharp green eyes that were already fixated on him.

The horrors of the past two days were destroying him. He didn't have patience anymore to be as calm and easygoing as he used to be, when he was human. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

The wolf replied, "Because you're new, just like me… Why're you here?"

Yan answered cautiously, still amazed at the situation he was in, "For existing I guess."

He looked around the dim cell to see cobwebs layering every corner, and felt the cold stone floor which was also a bit moist with who knows what.

The white wolf opposite to him let out a short laugh. "That's what they do, these humans. They're scared of what they don't know, or what they haven't seen."

Yan just smirked and said, "Well you sure act like you know a lot. Were you a human too?"

The white wolf just looked at him with a "What the hell are you stupid?" kind of face.

"Of course not… those disgusting humans. I would tear them apart easily if I had the chance. Nothing will stand in the way of me getting to paradise."

"Paradise, maybe that's it… it could be what I feel so much. Where I want to go so terribly."

The brown wolf looked at the white one and seemed very intrigued.

She asked the white one; "I've been getting a feeling… that I have to go somewhere. Do you think, maybe, that it might be this 'paradise' you keep talking about?"

The white wolf gave her the same look he gave Yan when he asked if the white wolf was human before. "Are you being serious!? That's every wolf's destiny! To get to paradise. It's in our blood! Some wolves don't recognize it though, not soon enough at least."

The brown wolf, stunned and with a very frightened tone in her voice, gave a simple "Ok."

After a few moments of silence, they were talking about it again. The questions seemed to be leaking out of the brown wolf's mind. She just kept going on and on about paradise, asking all about anything related to it she could think of. He had that feeling too, and he had to let them know, but he felt dumb saying it. He couldn't even accept what was happening to him at the moment.

The brown wolf continued on, "So you're saying everywhere you look there are fields of flowers? Ohhhhhhhh I can't wait to go there now! I wonder if there are-"

After a few minutes of listening to them talk about it, he had to join in. "Wait! You guys, I've been having the feeling too…"

The white wolf seemed amused, and with a smirk on his face just replied, "Well ok, glad to know you're a normal wolf…"

A sudden silence befell them for a good few minutes, until Yan built up the nerve to talk again. "So, what are your names anyway? I never got them"

The brown wolf replied, "Sasha."

The white wolf replied, "I'm Kiba."