RUNT

Healing inside

Serenity 

The woods are dark, thick with massive old trees draped in familiar scents. My nose twitches as I stroll through the small patches of light that manage to penatrate the dense canopy. My paws make no sound as I step through spongy purple moss, only the rustling of the wind can be heard, not a single bird or insect. I am alone. 

Small white flowers begin to appear in clusters at the base of tree roots as I continue to walk, the faint sweet scent reminding me of a person whose face I never got to see and probably never will. Shaking the thought away I turn, it isn't a path for me to follow. Not that one.

Instead I walk to where the trees begin to thin out, paths become visible but hazy at the same time. Smoke. Light but it is there. It drifts across the forest floor like an unwelcome fog. I am not really here but at the same time I cannot leave this place either, something is drawing me forward, urgently.
I quicken my pace, coming to a group of cabins. I know this place, it is the place those she-wolves held me prisoner. A quick look around at the crumbling buildings and I am headed for the very cabin they held me in. The place I might just still be.

It's dark inside. Something large is smoldering within. My gut clenches at the scent of burning fur.

"Something is in there. Something evil…" my wolf whispers, her voice pained and weak.

My eyes don't leave the darkness. I have to go this way. This is what I must deal with before I can know the truth. I need to understand what has happened or it will trap me here forever. 

"Confront everything?" She sounds nervous.

I nod. Things happened there that I don’t completely remember but I get flashes. A whip, questions, silver, pain, things that will haunt me far longer than the torture. How long did they keep me here?

"Did we even escape? I don't recall…" She breaks me out of my thoughts again.

"Me either. But from the look of everything it didn’t end well…"

A light flashes at the edge of my vision. Once, twice, then rapidly before stopping. I try to look at it but the glow remains in my peripheral no matter how I look. A soft humming comes from the light, a rhyme I only vaguely remember from my childhood begins its haunting cant.

The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town." A soft voice whispers along with the tune.
My mind reels. The voice is familiar,  the words are ones I know well. A nursery rhyme but something more as well.  A battle, one for land and crown, but what did it mean for me?

"Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
and drummed them out of town." A feminine lilt brings tears to my eyes. I do know the voice. It is one I will never be able to place with a face but it is one that speaks directly to my wolf.

"And when he had beat him out,
He beat him in again;
He beat him three times over,
His power to maintain." The last verse comes out as a hissed warning.

Who is fighting to maintain power? Lowering my head in thought as the voice stops though the humming continues I can't help but think of the things I overheard while held captive. Those she-wolves had not been working alone. Someone was helping them but the she-wolves were fodder. Maybe only one or two even knew what was happening outside of their revenge plot.

The person behind the scenes was someone from the Silvermoon pack. Siena mentioned it a few times when she was feeling extra chatty. But why would they attack me or Shadow Hunters? Don't my mates work directly for the king?