The Forest

Forty.

Time didn't stop for anyone. It didn't stop to let you heal or to gather your thoughts. And it definitely didn't slow down for me.

Winter faded away and with it the bodies of the creatures who had once hunted us.

All the skin-changers had fled or had been killed. Most had been killed. Nothing else dared to come around upon seeing the ferocity of the wolf-shifters hadn't changed. If anything, it had increased with the new relationships that had been developed.

Spring came which meant new grass and crops to be grown.

By spring the humans didn't need me to monitor them with the wolf-shifters. After the attack they began to understand they needed each other to survive.

I had even seen a few male wolf-shifters hanging around some of the human women. 

That had once been Court and I. A wolf-shifter and a human romance blooming. But now it was gone.

We were two wolf-shifters, not a human and a wolf. The romance remained, but the pain of loss stayed with me.

I felt hesitant to even step outside of our cabin after what happened in the forest. The first time I went back out there I burst into tears. Court had to walk me back and calm me down.

After that he returned to boiling water for a bath instead of taking me to visit the hot spring in the forest. As much as I loved the hot spring, I struggled to go out there knowing what had happened.

It wasn't even just me turning into a wolf, but the losses I had suffered. Both my mother and unborn child.

I hadn't shifted since that day. Even on the full moon when I could feel a pull and the wolf itching underneath my skin begging to be let out, I always bundled myself under blankets content to sleep the night away.

But even sleep isn't peaceful.

I was plagued by nightmares and night terrors. My only solstice is Court always being in bed with me to wake me up and hold me afterwards. He remained loyally by my side throughout it all. He never left.

Even when he began picking up his pack duties as a leader, he always came to check on me and if not, he sent Xerxes.

I hadn't spent much time with Xerxes even when we were all in the cabin. But over the past few moons we had spent a lot of time together.

He's typically quiet when in my cabin but having someone else in the cabin is reassuring. Sometimes the smallest of sounds will set me off.

Xerxes just like Court is also suffering a loss. While I had lost my mother, they had lost their brother. I had lost my father as well, but for all I know he's alive somewhere else deciding to start a new life.

It'd be easy to just get on my horse and run away, but I had come too far to just tuck tail and run. My home is here now even with bad memories. I have too many good ones to let the bad ones prevail.

Today I had managed to get myself out of the cabin and out to the pasture where Celeste and Starlette were grazing. 

I was spreading out some hay for them, filling up their feed and then their water. 

Xerxes is seated on the fencing of the pasture the two reside in waiting for me to be done. He had some sort of wooden object in his hand along with a knife that he used to carve it with. I set down the last flake of hay before leaving the two to graze.

Xerxes looked up as he saw me coming over. He swung himself around and got off the fence as I opened the gate and let myself through.

"What are you carving?" I asked.