beasts 2

I knew the sun was setting for many different reasons. I felt the hair standing up the back of neck, I heard the roar of the last rays of light tickling the tree tops and then cooling quickly and I heard the hunters thoughts about what was happening. They were deciding to head back to the village and wait it out. According to their memories, the caverns went on for miles underground and it was just too far to travel within the darkness consdering the dangers of Malvachia. I sat for a moment and gathered my remaining human senses. I had to go back and find the Alconitum. In haste, anger and indecision; I had dropped the whole sachel and prepared to become what the night wanted of me. I now regreted my hasty decision. Fore in every joint of my body...I felt the elongation beginning.

The caves grew cold and unforgiving and seemed to close in around me. My lupine eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness that accompanied the cold. All around my body, I could feel the suffocation squeezing and compressing. My bones started to hurt and the cramps shot up through my abdomen. To turn here would be precarious and complicated. Never before had I twisted and contorted in such a tight space. I wondered about this...insane imaginations flashed throughout my brain as the hunger churned. I could hear myself growl and my breath grew like fire. I had to find the Alconitum.

I turned back...scrambling through the enclosed crevices and crawl spaces. My senses heightened and pulled me back toward where I had dropped my sachel. The smell grew stronger the further I crawled. And what would I do when I found my sachel? Should I really take the herb and kill the urge just so that tomorrow would bring more torture and animalistic instincts. I would find the Alconitum and then I would leave...I would run run far away from the caverns. I would find a new village and I would learn to live there away from my history. I could live from the Alconitum until they forgot about looking for me. Then, maybe then, when there was no more medicines, if the taltos failed me...I would run back into the forest and join my own kind. Maybe by then...the huntsmen would have found a new past time... a new prey to hunt down or maybe I would have forgotten my values and then I could rid myself of them.

I found my velvet sachel in a pool of cave water. Despite the water logged bag, the Alconitum was curiously dry. I crammed a couple sprigs into my mouth and lay back against the cool cavern wall. I felt the cramps in my stomach intensify and then slowly decrease. Reaching up, I touched my fingers to my canines and felt the bone gradually pulling back into the flesh. I could still see every detail of the cave and my nails were not shortening either. I decided to make due with the little humanistic changes that the small dosage afforded me. By the looks of it, I only had about 10 sprigs of Alonitum left and I had to make it last until I could find the taltos, if I could find the taltos. She could provide more Wolfsbane....maybe even enough for me to start over somewhere as human. I was saddened suddenly by the realization of what I had become. I would never taste the true sweetness of love as human women experienced. I would never have children...I could not afford to make them into what I was...and I would never ever be free from the binds of magic. What exactly did I run for? Wouldn't it be easier to let them kill me and end my suffering? Then I saw his face again...the man whom I knew nothing about in reality. He guarded his thoughts so throughly that it angered me. Bits and peices escaped the fortress of his protecting and these bits and peices so intrigued me. I saw him walking toward me holding out his hand. I saw the strange semblence of love in his eyes....the eyes...oh, those amazing eyes that held so much and allowed so little to escape. I saw flashes of things that made me blush. His thoughts for me were carnal yet loving and this confused me to no end. How could he care for such an animal as I had become and why did he yet hide so much. I could read all the others...all of them. I could see their cowardice, there dispicable ways and I could see their families as well.

And then....in the quickness that was my mind...I saw his name....Tamas. They feared Tamas...I saw this now. I sat up straight in the tight crawl space. It was so abrupt that I slammed my head into the overhanging rock. My surprise at the information that was filtering into my brain prevented me from feeling the human pain of anything at the moment. Tamas was feared by them...the other hunters. I saw this and other peices of information slamming my brain with pulse after pulse of radiating connection. Tamas had the eyes of the spirits...they were blue, of course...he wasn't seen as the others. He was ....he was once hated by the others. They thought Tamas to be a demon. Then, as abruptly as the thoughts came through to me, they were gone. Tamas was falling asleep. I saw him falling into deep sleep and then the connection was broken.

..........................

I heard them outside the caverns, baying at the full red moon. My brothers and sisters had gathered around the high rocks of Malvachia forest. The smell of the humans were radiating all throughout the trees, the leaves and drifting upon the very air. I could smell the wolves... their blood and and I could smell their rich coats. They circled the caverns and waited for something to satisfy their hungers. I couldn't forget so quickly that I remained in human form and more than likely, they smelled the human on my flesh and in my blood. I do not think that they would kill me because I am their kin but I was frightened. Something in the woods was keeping me on edge. I pushed myself into the moonlight. The last rock of the cavern gave way under my feet and sent me sprawling out onto the hard surface of the cliffs. I grunted and looked around at the shimmering night that blanketed Malvachia forest. The moon was upon us full force and high in the sky. Everything was alight with the fake day. Humans could see very well in the full moon light but with us, it was amazing; it was something that almost falls beyond explanation. Every detail was illuminated...brought to yet more light underneath the lumanescense of that lunar star. I saw their eyes flitting here and there and their growls; my brothers and my sisters in the curse. I sensed that they cared not to feed of me at all and so I started to rise from my fall; I assumed logically that I would leave a bad taste in their mouth and so I laughed. I gathered my sachel in my fist and took off in a run toward Crotrali, the village in the north. No one followed me.