She has been part of the forest for as long as she can remember, the plague of old days having stolen her mother from her. It was lonely at first, and at night when the sky is dark and all those silver stars look so cold, she can remember exactly how that had felt. How her heart had bent and broken, and how, eventually, she had filled those fissures with the gravel of half-truths that still sometimes wound her.
It’s not so lonely, the dark just makes it feel that way.
You don’t need a mother, you have the willows and their reaching branches.
You aren’t alone, see? The wolves will let you stay.
And the wolves did let her stay.
This body feels like home now, small and thickly muscled, dense gray and cornflower blue fur, heavy paws. She likes that she can slip through the forest unnoticed, that sometimes her snarling smile forces gazes away from her, chasing away eyes that wonder about a blue wolf. It hurts less than when invisibility hadn’t been her own choice, when, as a spindly-legged babe with plague-sick smeared across her mouth and over her chest, those same eyes had looked carefully elsewhere.
It is better on her own terms.
Recently though, the numbers of her pack have thinned, and with that loss of security and canid instincts urging her on, she finds her days spent in search of a new family. She craves the company and safety of others, misses the long aroo-howl of a successful hunt, and the distance from that which she used to be. Large and fragile, hooves and flat teeth, way too much swishy hair. So she is both startled and resentful when she discovers a new pack, and it seems to include a horse.
She so nearly leaves them, snarling her displeasure with flattened ears and hackles raised, but when no one seems to notice her fussing, she stays. She blames it on curiosity, that wolves would choose to be with a horse, something so ugly and fragile and imperfect. Do they not understand that they are better than this? She stays to understand, definitely not because she cares.
At first she keeps her careful distance, staying low and quiet and out of sight, nothing more than a lurking ghost or a flash of pale blue and dirty silver. But as the days pass and she watches this boy with his wolves, her wariness loses its jagged edges. It seems like he genuinely likes his wolves, which is something she still absolutely cannot fathom and requires more paws-on exploring. So one morning, as the wolves return to mill around and greet him, ears soft and tongues lolling, she joins them too. She is smaller than the others, and of course bluer, and she is so careful to make sure he notices her, but that he also notices she doesn’t notice him.
It is always better on her own terms.
the devil in my arms said feed me to the wolves tonight