"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
~Hannah Arendt~
Chapter Three: Stop And Smell The Roses
She wakes early next morning and feels no benefits of her pitiful rest. Perhaps it's the new surroundings, or the fact that her life sucks, but she is finding it harder to get to sleep and even harder to stay there.
She refuses the room allocated to her by the monks and settles where she first woke. The open air refreshes her and makes her feel connected. Besides, after a good few months of sleeping rough, she is almost used to it. After eating, she makes her way to the gardens, stocked full of exotic flowers and plants. As beautiful as it all is, the scent is overpowering and hurts her nose.
"I thought you guys were supposed to live a life free of luxury or whatever?" she asks a boy tending a pot of herbs. He smiles at her, almost self deprecating.
"They were here when we bought the place." He replies, sarcastically, though not unkindly. His English is better than most and the accent he speaks it in (American, she guesses) is not as stilted. She wonders where he learned it from and whether they have a TV in this place. Or even electricity.
He doesn't look surprised to see her there, although they haven't met before, and it is no great shock to her. This seems like the kind of place where news travels fast. Out of the corner of her eye, she picks up a flicker of movement, just a little behind the trees. The boy follows her as she moves to investigate.
A man, broad shouldered and muscled, moves quickly and gracefully. His legs remain firmly on the ground while his arms draw patterns in the air. She'd guess it was Tai Chi, though it looks nothing like what you might see at Granny hour in Forks park. She can hear each deep breath as he inhales right down to the moment when it settles in his lungs ready to be expelled again.
"What is he doing?" she asks the boy.
"Moving," he replies simply. She wonders if he's being sarcastic for a moment but his face is open and friendly.
"Yeah, but what is it called?"
His expression shifts to one of confusion as he opens and closes his mouth in search of an answer. After a few seconds of consideration, he looks her dead in the eye. "Moving," he says again, firmly as though the change in tone may help her understand better. Then he takes her arms and stands behind her, drawing circles in the air with her limbs. He tells her to breathe and focus but not to think. It takes her a few moments to work through the contradiction.
She can feel the air as it smooths over her, slipping between her fingers. She can feel it so strongly that she's sure she could push away, beat it down. It makes her feel alive-powerful and then he drops her arms and smiles at her, raising an eyebrow in the hope that she might now understand.
She does...a little.
...
For the next few days, she does nothing but eat and move. She still can't sleep. Moving is good because no thinking means no thinking of Sam and Emily and death and her father. The first few times are spent hiding in the gardens, trying to pick up the routines as one monk or another practises. They quickly discover her and before long, she's moving beside them, becoming better and better. Becoming free.
She comes to realise just how restrictive her life was back when bare essentials were mascara and her Ipod. Now, she's living off her own back, having to find ways to not only survive but to live and she feels so much more fulfiled and stronger than she ever did. There's still something missing, she doesn't know what. Maybe it's Sam, maybe it's her father...but it's there. She can feel it gnawing away at her stomach, trying to burst through like that creepy Loch Ness kid. Except she's quite sure that this won't have a happy ending so she swallows it down and simply moves.
...
It takes a few months before the monks will let her go outside the walls. During that time, she trains and she works on rebuilding herself from the ground up. The hardest part is the meditations. Leah has never been one for sitting still.
"How much longer do I have to do this, Wu?" she asks, addressing the first man she met. He smiles and shakes his head. He never seems to tire of mocking her lack of patience though she doesn't mind it. What she's getting in return more than makes up for it.
"Until you succeed."
She snorts, a little irritated now. "Yeah, succeed in doing the impossible."
"It's not impossible. You just have to focus."
There it is, the magic word again. Just focus and everything will be alright. They're a nice bunch but she knows they're wasting their time with this one. Phasing as it goes is pretty simple. From human to wolf in the blink of an eye -no pain, no mess-unless you count the shredded clothes. Wu wants her to take it slow, to pull back. Selective phasing. Even if she could do it, she can imagine it to be pretty painful.
With a sigh, she closes her eyes and tunes her mind to silence. Taking deep breaths in and deep breaths out, she focuses on her hands, feels the wind play across her skin. She flexes them and the crack of her knuckles reverberates through her spine. Finding that switch, she pulls on it just enough to kick her phase off and then pulls back. The last seventy two times she's done this has ended with her phasing into the flowerbeds. Yuen still hasn't forgiven her for 'murdering' his orchids. This time however, it seems to take.
Her skin tingles and she can feel it pulling and twisting. Claws rip through the tips of her fingers sending sharp, stinging pain through her arms. She bites her lip against it. This is just the start and she's quite sure that it will only get worse. Opening her eyes slowly, she dares a glance at her deformed hand. It is grotesque, as she expected but the sight sends a surge of pride through her. Soft downy fur glitters on the surface as it spikes through her skin, creeping up her arm. She can feel every second of it like the prick of a needle. It's the worst pain she's probably ever felt but she's come this far.
In one more moment, her control snaps and she completes the phase, fur bursting our of every pore. She's learned to adapt quickly to the little things that make the change so disorientating, like viewing the world from the sides of your head for one thing.
Wu pats her on the head and she feels a stab of gratitude for the gesture. He's less wary around her than the others but not enough that reaching out to her doesn't require some effort. Leah lowers her nose to the ground and snuffles the flowers. Most are hanging dead, snapped at the neck. She gives a mental eye-roll. The last thing she needs in this place is another lecture.
At least she's learned something today.
There's a little spring in the gardens that she uses to bathe. Her body heat warms the water slightly and she lays her head against the bank and relaxes. There's nothing quite like this, breathing in the flowers around you as fresh water laps at your skin.
"Mmm," she mutters, ears automatically tuning into the noises around her. Noises that she never really paid attention to in her human form. If the monks have taught her anything, it's that there is no in-between. She is the weapon, every last part of her from human to wolf. Both sides have to be strong and conditioned if she wants to survive. It's a tiring though and entirely unfair but who gives a shit? Nobody else in this world so she can't too. She has to do more than her best to become stronger. Tough isn't good enough, she needs to be unstoppable.
...
The next few months are hard. The monks won't even let her leave the temple until they are sure she can take care of herself. Every waking hour is spent training and meditating-or trying to at least. They teach her things outside of Quileute legend, things that she never even would have considered possible if she had any inclination to consider them at all.
Leah drinks it all in, never complaining. Instead, she delights in the change. She can feel a new sense of power working through her entire being. The isolation, the loneliness, even the wariness that the monks still regard her with doesn't matter. Nothing compares to the feeling of being stripped down and re-created. A stronger, better, more enlightened version of herself. Her longing for Sam turns to anger. Her sadness at Emily's betrayal turns to rage. Her respect for her pack, for her family, even for her tribe turns to pity for their weakness and blind acceptance of the things that keep them inferior. Her feelings of self hatred are replaced by a new-found sense of self respect.
Only by lifting the binds of her bloodline has she gained some they feel she has learned enough, they set her loose.
...