Change in Life

Chapter 20. True

You know that strained tightness you get in certain parts of your body when you wake up from sleeping wrong? That painful wall that has suddenly been erected that unrelentingly stops you from lifting your arm higher than it normally would, or turning you head only to get halfway and not go any further? You dismiss it and continue on your day with it barely being a distant thought until you go and do something mundane that strikes that wall to set itself up again. That clenched barrier you had passed so many times before now resilient. You had been past that point so many times. It was simple before, now it feels like any further movement will snap something off. Now you're agitated at how necessary doing that one thing was when you are restricted from doing so.

This was Blake.

All muscles we fine and movement had not been impeded. The barrier that set itself before him lay in his mind where two subconscious minds played their endless cruel war games back and fourth with his body being the battle ground and prize. Strong as his human trait had been, his fox had, through broken laws and tribulation, driven itself up and had managed to surpass his biped counterpart. His fox should have won right then and there when he had Brock in his jaws. The line from civil to wild-will was there. His fox trait stood on the brink. Yet that single wall stood and stopped him. The arm and his human trait extended in front of him, stopping him from completing his journey. Performing something that should have come naturally to his true mind drove the feel of pure restlessness home.

It didn't help him when Blake woke to find himself in Jade's den a night later. He didn't even remember blacking out in the open. The last things he vaguely recalled muttering in his wandering fury were the injustices and narrow-mindedness of the wild. All other things had been cloudy, yet the thing that was adamant was his human mind proverbially grabbing the scruff of his neck and hauling him back to take charge once more. From this, his fox mind had a hard time recovering. The horrifying aspect of mating season for his human mind had forced it to fight back with vengeance.

The den was empty when Blake opened his heavy eye lids. The telltale signs of Jade being recently there were quite clear. A trail of lightly melted snow had been dragged into the den leading to his resting spot, the gouges behind his neck ached at being recently cleaned, a tasty rat was placed in front of his muzzle, and most notably, Jade's potent aroma sent his wild mind crazy.

Yet that latter thought was fuzzy. His old mind held the reins now and mushed him outside. Jade's scent led towards the fields, so he took the direct opposite way with his inner fox yapping in protest in some far dark corner of his head, chained up. All thoughts now were reminiscing on better times before he met Jade. Things that may have bored him shone like fireworks. To be in a state where he could relax for a while without the paranoia of dying were sickly sweet.

In front of him he opened his figurative library book and skimped through the pages until he spotted "red fox breeding".

A week... a week and a bit, maybe? He calculated.

That's how long he needed to be at a distance to Jade. It had to be this time of year that was irritating him. All he had to do was wait out Jade's hormones and things could go back to surviving; not just surviving and breeding. It hurt him to think that he was deliberately taking measures to not be with her. He convinced himself that, now Brock was out of the picture, her seasonal drive would push her to find other suitors. This was very far-fetched. He knew she had her heart set on him. She wouldn't have found him passed out in the middle of nowhere if she hadn't been seeking him out again otherwise.

And the fact remained which he had brought up with Astrid. Due to shooting, there weren't many foxes left in the woods. The smart ones stayed away from human activity, the desperate ones risked everything. As far as Blake was concerned, it was just him and Jade... and Brock and his vixens. Where they stayed was a reaching guess. The next few nights would be difficult for the both of them. The less of her scent and warmth he conducted, the less likely his fox trait would command his body again and give in to the purest temptation of life.