DRETCH
html © dante.
| ... and from your lips she drew your hallelujah |
| Something primal drives me awake, my eyes snapping open. Our wolf pack sleeps with us this night, many of them piled atop my wolf form like so many dogs, sweat pooling between my side and the cave’s floor. The white beta’s fur tickles my nose and I resist the urge to sneeze as I try to shift into something small enough to extricate myself from underneath them without waking any. Muscle and bone rend and twist, my ribcage shrinking, muzzle changing shape as I exchange fangs for blunted rodent teeth. I grit my teeth together against the deep ache that takes hold no matter how many hundreds of times I change, now struggling to remove my mouse-self from underneath the wolf. Thankfully, he yawns and rolls over, snuggling deeper into the pile as I slip away on silent paws. I do not look back as Set’s golden yellow eyes follow my fleeing figure, nor do I pause when he echoes a warning in my head not to roam too far. It is not yet morning, though I do not know how I know this. Perhaps it is the nocturnal creatures I harbor somewhere in my head, each waiting for their turn in the figurative “light”. In any matter, skittering about the forest as one of the smallest of prey creatures is not recommended. Once at the cave mouth, I run up the wall, finding a small jut of rock to rest on. I close my eyes and gasp with the pain of another change made so quickly after the last, but in moments I am flapping off into the darkness on leather wings. I weave through the close, twisting corridors that make up the Forest, the quiet filled with little more than the flutter of my wing. My clicks bounces off something hulking, a great scaled thing that takes a swipe at me as I twist away. A narrow miss but I still chitter angrily at it as I retreat. As if the eternal darkness is not enough, these monsters that stalk these common lands I call home are a relentless pestilence. I discovered at an early age that eating in any form – wolf, bear, bat, what have you – translates to satiety even in my true form. I wing toward the openness of the Meadow, echolocation making my travel easy. I swipe a hearty, bitter-tasting moth from the air, finishing it off quickly before snagging an unidentified insect, this one sweet and juicy on my tongue. It only takes a few minutes to have my fill and I find roost in a gnarled oak on the southern edge of the Meadow, wrapping my wings around myself for warmth in the pre-dawn (though it seems I’ll never see dawn again) air and falling back asleep. Hello? The inquiry startles me awake and my eyes flutter open to meet narrowed orange ones. From my upside down vantage, I can barely make out that it’s a young black mare whose discovered me. I quickly take her in, what I can see from here, in the dark, my gaze catching briefly on what looks like webbing across her chest. “I like spiders,” I blurt, claws tightening their hold on the branch. Growing up with Set and Niklas has its disadvantages, one of which is my lack of social skills. |
@[Arachna]