Female ✔️

2: my hate for you

Blank stares are nice, a subtle nothingness that you can pull off anytime, it feels good too, not having to take anyone's shit. Here, it's all I do. Stare at this white wood wall that isn't decorated in any way. My bedroom. None of the four walls are alive, all just white.

I've never had any sort of desire to put up a picture, painting, or poster. In fact, this is the most time I've ever spent in my room at once, preferring to merely crash here once in awhile when the forest got too stiff or busy during the lunar eclipses and so on. The indoors always made unease creep up my spine.

The mountain constantly calling to me outside the window I open all the way to let in the crisp air, the mid morning sunlight filtering through the low fog and splaying on the flooring. This offers me a little comfort. Or is this just cabin fever?

My feet rub against each other beneath the sheets, legs tingling, muscles ache from being cooped up. The blanket on top of me is annoying and heavy when I much rather fur. The urges to shift make me crazy, the wolf inside me becomes harder and harder to control.

I lay on my chest, cheek pressed to the mattress, facing the doorway, wondering what caused me to be like this.

"Montana?" My mother comes in to interrupt my thoughts, she's small like me, but she's dainty and I'm just weak. Her small feet clad in socks that I have never been able to endure, silent against the dark wooden floors. Sitting on the edge on my bed, she peels the sheet away from my bare back as I watch her face. The tears like little salted droplets of sadness, gathering together before slipping down her soft cheek. "Why do you have to be so difficult sometimes?"

"I do this to myself." My words are choppy, talking with this mouth feels weird and unnatural compared to that of my primitive side's promise of howls.

"You do do this to yourself. You are punishing yourself when you speak out like-"

"I know my actions and their consequences." It feels like a mantra, as if I'm trying to prove my own words to myself.

My mother's mouth closes, fingers pulling up the sheet back to my shoulders, concealing my choice. She doesn't understand things like I do. My mother sees things in the human way, chance and outer factors all playing off each other. I see things the wolf way, survival and nature's course.

My eyes wander up to her face, studying her. We share the same hair, messy brown waves that tumble too long down our backs, mine always twisted in one of her braids and her's always up in a knot. Mother's smooth skin is flawless and sprinkled with little sun freckles where as mine looks like it had down poured from countless hours outdoors.

"My girl," She coos, stroking my hair back and pressing her nose to my temple. "You are too strong for your own good."

I close my eyes, enveloped by her loving touch, even though she won't understand, I still lean into this hold. It feels nice to have someone care.

"We're sending you north, to a pack that will teach you the ways of a female." My father stands in my doorway, looking down on me with a frown on his face. Brows are drawn in frustration and anger, a look we share. He always is stuck in fury when it comes to me, unable to comprehend me. Being myself has never sat well with my father.

I growl, flashing my teeth at my own flesh and blood. A blunt act of defiance. Today, he doesn't react, there isn't even a twitch of lip, just that same placid stare. Disappointment is all I can smell in this room now, not even the lingering of this room's stale scent reaches my nostrils. It's just his feelings.

Mother still smoothing down my wild hair, I feel one of her tears drop onto my arm. I stare at this since I have no chance of dominance against the man in the room and neither does she. I watch the tear roll down the curve of my arm, not the only irritating itch on my body.