When she awoke around midday, Ylwa had shed her fur and claws for skin, hands, and long, dark hair. She was parched, so she climbed out of her bed of leaves and made her way over to the nearby creek. She climbed all the way into the creek and drank deeply of its cool, invigorating water. She then washed herself thoroughly and scrubbed the blood out of the few remaining scraps of clothes that survived last night's transformation. She walked back to her bed of leaves, laid down, and drifted off to the sounds of birds and other forest animals.
The next time that Ylwa woke up, it was late afternoon, almost evening. She lounged on her bed for a bit, taking in the sounds and scents around her that assured her everything was safe. She was fairly hungry, and the need to run and hunt was again very strong, but it was too soon for another transformation. In addition to that, even though she felt much more vulnerable in this state, she had been warned time and again by some well-meaning relation or another that she should always wait until the cover of night before giving in to her beast blood. Eventually, Ylwa climbed out of her bed and made her way down to the creek for another drink of water. She then began meandering further into the forest, towards the location that her pack called home. In order to hold her gnawing hunger at bay, she picked and ate some berries as she traveled.
About an hour and a half into her trip, darkness fell. Ylwa was still unable to transform into her wolf form, as her transformation yesterday had been a few hours after darkness had fallen. The birds and other daytime creatures settled into their homes for the night, and the nighttime creatures emerged. Ylwa traveled onward to the sound of hooting owls, swooshing bats, cheeping insects, and those not-quite-identifyable nighttime noises that can always be found in a forest.
The forest seemed to have an energy of its own that informed the woodland creatures and those well-attuned to their surroundings when something was not normal. Ylwa, on full alert, felt when the atmosphere in the woods around her began to change, and she knew that something was coming. She quickly ducked into a bush and listened. Far off, she could hear rustling and footsteps. The footsteps were not quiet, as if the maker of the sounds had no interest in concealing their presence. A creature (or creatures, by the sound of it) who lacked caution, then. All the more reason to be careful. Soon, she saw three large, dark forms dashing through the trees a couple hundred yards away. Her own kind, it would appear, but no relatives of hers.
Once the intruders had passed, Ylwa crept over to where the three strangers had passed by and sniffed the air – the same three whose old campsite she found that morning. Well, they appear to be gone now, she thought to herself. All the same, she crept back over to the bush and walked parallel to their trail, several yards away.
Soon, Ylwa felt that her ability to change had returned to her, and quickly allowed the wolf to take over her human form. Bones crunched and popped and ligaments stretched and bent as her entire structure changed from that of a human to a large, hairy beast. Elated, she took off through the woods at top speed, delighted to be free from the confines of her human body. By this time, she was fairly hungry. So after a quick dash of delight, she began using her heightened sense of smell to seek out food. She could smell that there had been a deer nearby, but with a fawn. She had no interest in depriving a fawn of its mother. There had been a couple of foxes nearby as well. As the breeze shifted, she scented a rabbit – a terrified rabbit. She followed the breeze. As she drew near, she again caught whiff of the others she saw pass by earlier. They must have awoken the poor rabbit and scared it half to death, because rabbits aren't usually up at this hour. While they are certainly flighty prey, their hearts are also not usually racing as fast as this one's was. She decided to do it the favor of putting it out of its miserable, terrified existence by making it her early-evening snack.
After making quick work of the rabbit that she found cowering in the bottom of a tree, Ylwa again ran off into the night. She ran faster and faster, until she felt that she was one with the forest she was flying through. She blocked out of her mind everything but the trees, the ground that her feet were barely landing upon as they launch her onward, and the wind - blowing through her fur, being pulled in and out of her nose as she breathed, and igniting pleasure sensors all over her body. As she discovered the trail of a young male deer, she instinctively turned toward the direction that he went off in. Oblivious to all else, Ylwa allowed her desire to hunt consume her entire being.
After following the trail of the deer with an inhuman focus, Ylwa noticed a smell that seemed wrong. She scrambled to a stop as she disengaged her brain from the hunt just enough to begin to evaluate the situation. Blood. Someone else's prey. As these thoughts pushed their way through, Ylwa came sliding into a clearing where she saw the three strangers gathered around a deer. Her deer. No. Their deer. As all three of them raised their heads from their meal and looked at her, she lowered herself submissively and began to back away from them, hoping that they would go back to eating and forget about this encounter. No such luck.
The group of three strangers consisted of a female, a larger male, and a younger male. The larger male, followed by the female, left their prey and boldly approached Ylwa. She began to lower herself submissively to the ground, but then had second thoughts, leapt up, and ran at top speed in the other direction. The three gave chase.
Ylwa didn't know how long she had run, or how far from her home this run had taken her, but before too long, the larger male, she assumed the leader of the group, had caught up to her, and began running alongside her. Once she saw that he meant her no harm, she slowed her pace a bit to catch her breath, and the female pulled up alongside them as well. Their other friend seemed to have fallen behind. Eventually, the female stopped, sniffed the air, and veered off to the right. The male slowed and changed his course to follow after the female. He invited Ylwa to join them – to hunt by their sides. Generally reserved and rather distrustful of strangers, she shocked even herself by taking the stranger up on his offer.
She really should head back to her family tonight, running up a river on her way back so as to hide her trail from these strangers. Her family, a pack of werewolves who lived outside of human law, had raised her and all of her cousins to be distrustful of strange humans. They never said anything about other humans who were like them, though. She didn't even know that such a thing existed. She was pleased with her discovery. She was also pleased with the sensations she felt flowing through her body at the male's presence. She sensed the same feeling coming from him that she had sensed on many males previously when they were near a female that they found appealing. She had seen what that feeling led to, and had even felt some of the males directing that emotion towards her recently, though she never allowed them to get any further than that. With this one, though, she felt a strange excitement within herself that ignited every part of her being, more so even than hunting did. And so she followed him.