Paw Print

Chapter Two: Hallucinated Misery

By: Anaea

"We are with The Moon," said Conry. He looked at me, dripping blood on the white-snow-covered clearing of North Dakota. Two slabs of skin hung from him, where the enemies had almost skinned him alive. He was sitting down, whether it was because he wanted me to see the the ribs protruding from his chest more easily or because of the fact that his right hind leg was missing, save a small sliver of bone, which was hanging on for dear life, was a mystery to me.

As I looked over his wounds, more and more mangled, mauled, chewed-up-and-spit-out, half-dead wolves began emerging, attempting to drag their ―mostly― unresponsive bodies.

Conry snarled at me, and the wolves whose throats had not been torn out, who were not gurgling out blood, followed our Alpha.

"You! You sent us to the Moon! Witch! You killed us!" The yell, that accusation, obliterated any and every mental barrier I had only to echo in my brain, growing louder and louder, until I was sure my head would burst open, releasing the caged sound. Which would also allow for my guilt, sorrow, and self-hatred to come out to bite me in the ass, tear out my throat, and stomp on my heart.

I sat up with a cry. Looking around me I saw that I was in a cave... and that I'd shifted to my humanoid form. With a sigh I turned to look at the three pups in the deeper end of the cave... I looked towards the entrance... and turned right back. Three?! Crap! I immediately shifted and ran out of the cave. No no no no no no no...! I was missing one! Oh, gods... please let the little one be alright! I found his scent relatively quickly, and ran off, at full speed.

Without my consent, my eyes shifted, and looked towards the Moon. 'A few more hours. A few more hours and I'll inherit the Pack.' I thought. Thinking of the Pack, my dream... my nightmare, saw it as an opportune moment to invade my mind. It'd been over three weeks since my kin had been killed. Three weeks since I'd been left to care for four pups, none of which were my own. Three weeks and I still hadn't found a place to make a home for the Little Ones. I had no idea where I was. And if it weren't for the Moon's ever-changing face I wouldn't know what day it was either.

So distracted by my thoughts I was that when I got to where the pup I had failed to notice the young bull Moose that had cornered it. That is... until I ran dead-smack into it....

'Oh bad idea Addie... no death jokes! Crap too late! You jinxed the fight! Aaaggghhh!!! Two rabbits says you die!' I bet against myself as the moose rounded on me...

'Uh-oh I think it's mad....' Cuan, the small all-over dark-gray pup said through the wind.

'Quiet, Cuan son of Fridolf! Hide, do not be seen, and do not run.' I spoke in turn, a more than slightly-formal tone emerging with my annoyance. The cub turned and hid in the tall grass that surrounded us.

Good thing too, because the moose chose the moment to charge me. Even better, this time, I had been paying attention! I jumped at it... not very smart, but I don't care! I snapped my jaws over its nose, using my right foreleg's claws to gouge out its left eye.

Heh-heh... whoops... maybe I should have tried to injure it elsewhere first.

The animal shook it's massive head wildly until I lost my grip and went flying straight at a tree. I rotated my body so that I'd hit the giant pine with my feet. I used my joints as springs to cushion the the impact, then used them again to jump straight at the moose again.... Well... I tried to but I over shot it and ended up going too high to even touch the beast... unfortunately... I was just high enough off the ground for the moose to have gutted me when it stood on its hind legs, had I not twisted my body at the last second. But that still let the damn thing dig its horn... antler... things into my right hind leg and most of my side.

I snarled loudly, whether I did it because of the pain or because of the anger I felt at having been stupid enough to get hit, I don't know.

I landed heavily on the ground almost twenty yards from my enemy, and howled in pain when I heard, and felt something in my injured leg snap, making a loud, sickeningly, gruesome sound.

'I can't lose! The pups will die, I can't lose! I won't lose... I won't send you to the Moon too!' it wasn't until I said that, that I realized that the dream was still distracting me. The moose was charging at me again... and this time I couldn't move. Why? Why should I get to live, when I caused my own pack's annihilation? My presence might have made some difference! Brother? Do you hate me? Is that the reason that you did not allow me to go? Is that why you ordered me to leave things as they were? Because I was already much, much too late? Bozkurtlar? Freki? Do you despise me as well?

The Moose was getting closer, but although everything seemed to slow down, I was still frozen to the ground.

Fifteen yards....

Ten yards....

Five....

Five feet....

'Addie, you are my sister, you are my family, I could not hate you. You must fight! You must must ensure the survival of our people!' The wind carried my brother's voice. Oh, how I'd missed it! 'Hey, you idiot! Snap out of it! If you die, I'll kill you, I swear I will!'

Ah, and there it was, what we always told each other before we hunted. Now I knew that I wasn't my own memory of his voice... I wasn't that smart.

With an almost playful snarl, I ran at the moose...

'You run like a goose!'

'Shut up!' yeah... definitely not my imagination....

When the moose and I were not more than three feet away, I sprang to the right, dove under the antler, and flew at its throat, crushing in with my jaws as I dug the claws on my left hind led and both my forelegs into whatever piece of flesh I was able to get my paws on... my injured leg flying around madly while the moose bucked and shook and jumped and rammed its head into trees in an attempt to throw me off. And, oh, yeah ―did I forget?― I clung on for dear life....

'You're jinxing it,' my brother sighed.

'Yeah? So what? You want to tag in?'

'Heh, yeah, just let go I almost sure you won't be stomped, kicked and crushed,'

'Oh, shut it... whoa!' my left hind leg came off and I tightened my grip with my fore legs. 'Actually... I think the crushing, kicking and stomping is starting to sound pretty good now...'

'Hang on!' The fur-and-grass-scented breeze that was my brother left swiftly.

The few-seconds-away-from-death moose apparently decided to take me up on that offer because next thing I know, the broken bone in my very broken leg decided to stab itself through the muscle and skin surrounding it when the moose slammed its body into a tree.

I shut my eyes and tightened my grip on his throat in an effort to shut out the pain. But it did me little good; the behemoth shook its head one more time, gently compared to the chaotic strength it had displayed not a minute ago. My body smashed into another tree, though this time I hit it with my entire right side, and I heard more bones break cleanly, this time ribs, at least three.

'Damn... I'm so tired...' I thought as the moose, more near death than I, turned angrily towards me.

It had no strength left. I knew it. Aparently someone forgot to tell him that. But he was not going to be the only one to die. So, driven by nothing but anger, pain, and hatred, he charged one last time.

Figures my brave, idiot brother's brave, idiot son would decide to jump his brave, idiot ―and furry!― little tail between myself and the stampeding beast... dumbass.

'No, don't!' my jaws shot out on instinct; gently but firmly, I grabbed him by the rump, and hauled him so that he was between my fore legs and covered him with my head, snarling at the still charging beast.

No use, it kept coming... guess it was a bit too much to hope for that it would be afraid of the Wolfling who'd signed its death sentence when said Wolfling was already down for the count. 'Damn, this sucks! I never got to go to Disney Land....' I whined with dry sarcasm.

Just before the damn thing gutted me like a salmon at the mercy of a grizzly, a gigantic white fur-ball of a ... ―thing?― came out of no where and tackled it. The scent that followed it though....

So filled with fear I was that I felt no pain any more. Numbly I got up on my three useful legs 'don't move,' I told the cub, as I use again grabbed him by his cute little furry butt, and this time I took off running... ―not like a damn goose!― in the direction of the cave where I'd left the other pups.

Not for the first time this winter, I cursed my dark coat. When the ground is covered by fluffy white snow, it's kind of hard to hide if you're dark enough to seem almost black at night.

And of course... it didn't help any that I was coming up on the last hundred yards. And they just so happen to mostly be a hundred-yard-or-so long field! And oh, but of course... this would not be the grand tale it is if not for my occasional clumsy-idiot moments. I wasn't even three yards into the field my only useful hind leg hit a rock and and barely managed to make myself let go of the Little One to avoid crushing him when the pain hit me. And since my front legs decided to keep running when my back legs decided to stop, my bum came down. Not enough? Well, my broken leg decided it wanted to rest... while my body was moving at nearly thirty-five miles per hour. Shall I dump three buckets of icing on the shit-filled cake that is my day? I let loose a half-howl, half-snarl, and turned to glare at my stupid leg... and what should I see but three werewolves running at me. One seemed to be dark gray... oh joy, I vaguely wondered if he occasionally wished his coat were another color. Another was brown-ish with, what seemed to be, black legs. And the last one was the white fur-ball that probably tortured the poor moose.

The gray wolf was a bit bigger than I was. The white one almost twice my size, and the brown one was bigger than the white one.... Yeah... oh joy....

Forget about my second wind, right at that moment I got my fourth wind and I ran to where the pup had landed, grabbed him and took off again. I took off in another direction, away from the small cave. I ran back into the forest and followed my ears to a not-so-small creek, jumped in, went out the other end and began running again before I remembered that with my leg bleeding as heavily as it was, it was unlikely that my very wet self would make them lose my trail. Told you I wasn't all that smart....

'Boz would love to throttle you right now,' said my lovely nephew with a giggle.

'Whatever. Why did you leave the cave anyways?' I not-so-playfully growled. I turned in a wide arc to make my way back to the cave.

'I was thirsty,' he answered.

I waited a few moments, jumping over the strip of water since the creek was much narrower here. 'You do remember that there is ice at the back of the cave that I told you was safe to lick, right?' I asked him.

... ...

... ...

... ...

'Well?'

'Whoops?'

I would have berated him for his idiocy... but I was five feet from the cave opening and I rushed in. The three other pups were awake already... and only then did I realize that the sun was rising. I told them to stay in the shadows, but as close to me as possible. I turned back to the entrance just in time, because the white wolf had just taken a couple of steps too many into the cave. I gave an almost roar-like snarl, and my front paw shot out and clawed his muzzle.

His head snapped to the side before he gave a rumbling growl.

He took another step, and of course, I tried to slap him away again... bad idea. His jaws quickly closed over my paw, not hard enough to crush the the bone, but definitely hard enough to draw blood. With less than little effort he tossed me over his shoulder, over his companions, out of the cave and thirty yards into the field, where I came to a stop after bouncing a few times and hurting myself further.

The gray and brown wolves turned to look at me while the white one approached the cowering cubs, while young Cuan stood defiantly between them and the werewolf.

In on last ditch effort to prevent the cubs' deaths, and shifted ―rather painfully― to my humanoid form.

My pale blue eyes slowly darkened and became gray-green orbs. My marroon-colored coat slowly but surely receded into my body, revealing, by now, bloodied, but fair skin. My tail tingled as it withdrew into my spine. My right leg throbbed painfully as the bone protruding from it became larger. Two ears descended from the top of my head and came to rest one its sides and became elvish-looking ones, while the fur on my head became only a little longer, and turned a dark brown, glowing bronze with the light of the rising sun. Declaws climbed down towards what were slowly becoming hands and feet.

I slowly stood. Barely over five feet tall, light-skinned, hazel-eyed, pixie-haired, blood-covered, teenage-looking girl; exposed, naked, at the mercy of the brutal November winds of where ever I was and to the mercy of three werewolves. My right thigh bent inhumanly out of shape; my right side had two vertical, parallel wounds running from breast to hip; my left shoulder now dislocated, the forearm swelling from when I hit the ground and it ended up between myself and a rock; two ribs trying to tear their way through my skin and a third already there, the gleaming white bone gross in every sense of the word. All in all, not a cover-worthy picture.

And after all that effort, all I could do once the white wolf turned from the pups and towards me was whisper, "no, please," in a human tongue and when I attempted to take a step forward my right leg decided to give out with a disgusting keh-gurg signaling that not only the skin had split further, but that something had broken.

"Please," I pleaded one last time, and with that, I fell forward, and the world turned black.

Bozkurtlar means gray wolf(Turkish)

Freki myth name of Odin's wolf(Norse)