Soul Seeker

37: Alpha

Free.

Finally, free.

Shackles gone, invisible barrier gone.

The cool clarity of ice-sharp memory flowing back, a crack in the glacier unleashing the flood.

He ran so fast his paws barely touched the floor, tearing the world apart with his speed and ancient power. It felt right.

For too long he had been stuck in an ailing, decaying human body with pitiful senses, almost akin to being deaf and blind.

He revelled in the power of his muscular wolf body, the way he felt every tiny particle of snow as the wind blew through his fur. Oh, he had missed this. An ear swivelled one way and listened to a reindeer munching moss a thousand day-walks away; his other picked up on a lone human traveller stepping through a fragile skin of new ice.

He was the wolf, and all he wished to do was hunt. His powerful nose scented his old pack, hunting far in the north, and anticipation thrilled through him at the thought of blending seamlessly into their ranks, transmitting his thoughts with the mere flick of his tail, working with them as one breath, as one paw-step, to ensure success. Together they could bring down a bear, a bison, a musk ox, and his claws tightened at the thrill that gave him. It had been too long since he had sunk his teeth into anything.

The memory was the best thing: a pure sense of self stretching all the way back to the beginning of the world, all the way to Ginnungagap. He alone had full mastery of his mind, so much so that he could reach back and pull out the tiniest details from the Yawning Void itself, from the moment his soul was first born.

The world wheeled around him, moon and stars and sky and earth and water... all except the sun. The sun was his, it always had been, and it was time they realised that. The ice thrumming through his veins made him want to flatten the world and rebuild it in his image.

This was truly the time of the wolf. He would never be caught unawares again.

A brief memory – golden curls, brown eyes, a heart-shaped face with pursed lips – flickered in his conscience, but he sent ice to sheathe it, pushing it down deep, burying it until he could no longer see her in his mind's eye. There. It was gone, as opaque and blue as the thickest mantle of the frozen sea.

He was himself again and it was glorious.

Finally.